Halo 5 ODST
by ODSTfanboy
Summary: After a Guardian destroys a colony ex-Covenant scavengers bound together by a wicked Kig-Yar Skirmisher arrive to take what they can. ODST's including Tarkov and his Rookie are recruited by Dare and her Protégé Macer to stop smugglers from selling UNSC information to the Covenant Pirates during the chaos. An AI watching behind enemy lines, knowing the Cole Protocol tries to die.


**Halo 5 ODST**

 **Prologue**

Sand and dust blows in waves with the wind. Sunlight cascades through, adding light and shadows. Sunlight from what appears to be early morning or late evening peeks passed a cracked wall. The broken wall of a building overlooks a large crater in a sand covered mountain range. Around the edge of the crater many buildings are tipping to slide into it or have flipped over onto others still on solid ground. Several airships can be seen in the distance in a chase. They cross over a crack in the screen flying into the distance. A large mishapen hand with rough rocklike scales and claws, obscures the view. The suddenly spinning the view looks straight at a squat creature with a face mask on. It says, "Jab-Yab find good treasure."

Jab-Yab picks up a humans helmet and looks it over. It has a dent on the temple and a cracked visor but still seemed to be in good shape. It had little lights inside after all. The Shipmistress did say to collect any human tech. He looked about at his fellow Unggoy being directed by a Kig-yar. They were sent here to scour an engagement site. She lost something, Jab-Yab and his brothers were sent to find it. One of his brothers Yib-Jub tries to grab his prize out of his hands and Jab-Yab has to yank the helmet back swatting his brother away.

Jab-Yab waddles to the Kig-Yar commander with Yib-Jub on his heals for a few paces. Before the second Unggoy sees a shiny object in a pile stopping to rummage for it. Jab-Yab held his prize up to the Kig-Yar which turns and looks at the Unggoy with a fierce stare. The Kig-Yar with its lizard-like jaws and spike-like feathers resembles some bird-like species, also known by humans as Jackals. The Kig-Yar in his blue armor nods to the Unggoy in approval and sends Jab-Yab on his way.

The Unggoy scavenger walks through the building, spotting other Unggoy scavenging the place with Kig-yar at their heels, barking their bird-like cackles to keep searching. Jab-Yab held up the helmet when any Kig-yar eyed him with hostility. The Kig-yar shewd Jab-Yab away, the Kig-yar happy to turn its attention to any Unggoy still searching. Jab-Yab soon exited the building and climbed into a gravlift of a U shaped hovering purple ship. It joined a clustered group of its brothers all clutching treasures smiliar to his. The ride up was short and bumpy.

The group exited the ship into a large purple hangar bay of a mother ship. The Unggoy were being corralled to a side door by more of the bird-like Kig-yar. However these had longer and thicker feathers. These Kig-Yar were known as Skirmishers, slightly larger and with beaks instead of lizard jaws, were also more pragmatic and militant than their Jackal cousins.

They twisted and turned up ramps and through halls. Jab-Yab somtimes held the helmet over its head and the view showed the clustered Grunts passing other aliens preparing for battle. Sangheli lighting up their bi-bladed energy swords, worm colonies swarming into their heavy Hunter armor, even a few of the floating snail, Huraguk with tenticles fixing things.

The group were ushered into a large room with a raised platform in the center and two long pits with scavenged tech piled in. The Shipmistresses under-commanders were all female, feathered and shirtless, the Kig-yar were rummaging through the tech then taking pieces to Huragaoks spread about the room at various work stations. While waiting its turn to toss its treasure in the pile Jab-Yab held the helmet over its head excitedly. It could see Kig-yar handing out yellow sacks with nipples attached to the ends like a baby bottle. The reward for working was food for the Unggoy.

The view turned, up to the platform a floating chair, once sacred and reserved for the Prophets of the Covenant. It could be seen with a hunched figure sitting in it. A pedistal with a green glowing small humanoid stood transparently next to the floating throne. A hologram of the colony and the ships over head spread out on the floor of the platform. The helmets view suddenly tumbled landing in the pile. A large Elite strode across the rim of the pit walking up to the platform to approach the throned figure.

The face of a green glowing man appeares in the corner of the visor. "What's this? Who are you? Where did you come from?" it asked, all its questions fuzzing together like voices all talking at the same time. Then the screen scrambled into so much static no images could be seen. When the display finally cleared a dark room with chairs and a table at the front could be seen in the dim light. Soft breath could be heard, like that of someone sleeping. Their boots were resting on the chair in front of them.

Chapter 1

Whiskey-6

The sleeping soldier is awoken by a buddy knocking his feet off the chair in front of him. The Medic comments, "Damn Rookie, You sleeping again." Her voice gruff for female. It comes from being an ODST, an Obital Drop Shock Trooper. It has been said they are considered crazy marines. They ride single man drop pods down through the atmosphere to stir up trouble behind enemy lines. Nicknamed Helljumpers for good reason. All those gathering in this hall have been tested even their newest recruit. The Rookie nods to Shepley, who is the Medic of his squad, as he looks around seeing others walking into the breifing room. Muttering and grumbling about this detail of protecting the evacuation of the colony.

The Veteran, Sergeant Tarkov walks in trailed by two opertives from the Office of Naval Intellegance, or ONI for short. Tarkov slams his weathered helmet on the table and commands, partially in his native russian tongue, all those in the room to settle down. "Attention! Cut the chatter and listen up people!" His old scars running up his jaw are nothing compared to his intimidating eyes. Eyes that have seen combact through much of the Human-Covenant war. He only introduces the ONI Officer with a recon helmet under her arm, Captain Veronica Dare.

To the Rookie the ONI Captain looks to be cresting six feet tall, of middle years with a blonde ponytail. She takes the Sergeants's que to begin and has the other ONI officer hit the lights. The second officer is younger with a pilot helmet and shorter with dark auburn hair tied back in the same fashion. Captain Dare's eyes are harder like the Sergeant Trakovs, but the ONI Pilot's are not hard or soft, so much as sad, like the outer colonists that have lost everything. Dare brings up a holographic map of the city. She highlights a couple of points on the map. The soldiers can see a giant crater where half the city used to be.

The ONI Officer starts with, "We have three Falcons warming up outside so we'll make this quick. ONI is pulling you off guard duty." She points to the hologram, saying, "There is an asset in need of reclimation, intel puts it in the warehouse district in the Hazardous Zone." Several pictures of the bird like Jackals and Skirmishers along with the stocky grunts appear around the map. Every ODST in the room perked up at the pictures, their battle instincts more weary, now they gave their full attention. "With all the refugees and aid workers taking all your precious time as of late there have been reports of Covenant activity in the city with smugglers, or possible defectors." Dare clicks the image again to reveal a video of the Forerunner Guardian event that broke the city and brought them all here.

Its a satellite image from orbit, it shows the planet. Half of the image is alight and half dark. The half that can be seen has a large desert, a dark storm with lightining rages on the end of the planet directly facing the sun. A long mountain range boarders the edge of the desert. The mountains are marked by sands from the desert on the east and fields of fugus from the dark side to the west. The fields stretch into the darkness that look like vines from the satellites height. The planets rotation appears to spin from north to south. On the image a tiny puff appears and the screen zooms in. The colony is seen with a dust cloud in the eastern part. Rock and building debris is tossed out from a central point crashing down on half the city. In the center of the dust cloud a large segmented and birdlike machine rises out of the devestation. It lifts into the sky then opens a slipspace rupture. It flys through the opening, leaving the colony to its troubles.

"I know these people have endured a lot but we can't let these Jackals slip through any cracks while we're down." She pauses, "The Op is simple we have intel there is a weapons exchange going down in a Traxus warehouse. There is a high clearance asset that got into these smugglers hands while scavanging a UNSC ship." Up pops on final image of a UNSC cranial implant. " This is what we are looking for, a Captian grade implant. ID TW2R..." The Rookie tones out the long ID number...blah, blah, blah... "Check with me if you get hands on, to verify the asset. This has astronomical data for our colonies. The Covies destroyed most of the outer colonies ending with Reach, then they found Earth but there are dozens more to protect." She pauses and looks over the room, turns to the Sergeant and says, "that is all, ship out Sergeant."

Tarkov bellars in his native Russian "Attention!" The whole room stands immediately. Then he switchs to English, "Squads Echo-9, Kilo-5 load up into birds one and two. Whiskey-6 with me in three. Arm up for a close quarters Op. Go!" The dozen and a half troopers line up on the side of the room to grab their weapons. Rookie falls in line behind Shepley and Spider the other members of Whiskey-6 along with the Veteran Sergeant. Spider is a colonial orphan. He spent a lot of time in his youth in ghettos on one planet or another. He was a troubled youth, but recieved some noteriaty from his graffitti tags on several planets. Now that he is an ODST traveling to different planets as a carreer, He's going for the record. For the most planets tagged. The Spanish marine even has his armor painted up with stylized flames. He keeps trying to customize Shepleys but she kept reporting it damaged and had replacements issued.

Most of the ODST's arm themselves with silenced weapons. The standard for a urban OP like this is a silenced magnum and silenced SMG. Several troopers geared up with a standard pressurized gas AR, some soliders put large amounts of trust in their weapons and won't part with certain ones. Like when a sports player that doesn't cut their hair for the season. Its a ritual for a win, and ODST's play with their lives. All take at least one silenced gun, a pistol or SMG.

In an orderly fashion they pile out passing through the motor pool on the way to the lower landing pad. Rookie sees Spider stop by a Flame painted warthog, his newest project. Spider kisses his fingertips and lays them on the squads ride, "I'll see you soon baby," he says to the warthog then turns to the Rookie, tapping him on the shoulder and smiles, "don't worry she'll miss you too." Spider says, putting his matching flame helmet on and running to keep up with the others loading up into their falcons.

Sand whips up from the falcons rotatary blades obscuring his vision for a moment. The Rookie nearly headed to the wrong falcon when he is stopped by the younger ONI officer now with her Pilot helmet on. Her solid palm slapped on his shoulder and halted him. "On your left trooper, this one's full." Her voice was commanding but had a gentleness to it.

The Rookie read the nameplate on her Helmet...Macer. She was dressed in ONI Pilot gear. "Yes, ma'am." He turned trotting off to Whiskey-6's Falcon. Tarkov cuffed a hand to the back of the Rookie's helmet. It was a forcful blow not meant to hurt but to reprimand. Tarkov the veteran Sergeant didn't say a word but the Rookie new that was the only slip the Sergeant would let slide today. The stoic Sergeant climbs in mounting the left side gun turret opposite the Rookie .

The Falcon's lift off full of ODSTs and pass over the "base", once the local law enforcement center. Rookie looks out his side of the falcon watching the land drift away. He sees warthogs and tanks in the streets with a dozen military and police pelicans on the roof landing pads. The squads mechanic, Spider, ODST and Graffiti arist, sat in the right gunner. Spider calls to the Rookie, "Yo! Rookie, Check this out," and nods to get his attention to the right side of the falcon.

The Rookie looks out to see the pillar for the space elevator and airport with large passenger ships with slip space drives. He could see crowds of people, refugees, civil aid workers, and law enforcement in the airfields. All from the colony trying to get off planet. Shepley, the only female ODST in Whiskey-6, comments, "The companies funding the colonies on harsher planets, like this one, they find it more cost effective to ship colonists once to a station, rather than ship food time and again, to feed their employees and families while their not working."

Spider cuts in, "Yeah, at least until they're operable again, if ever. The private sector got real good at this since worlds started getting glassed."

The falcons begin weaving between taller buildings as they past over the city. Rather than flying high and being easy to spot, they stay low just above the shorter structures. Fires and pillars of black smoke dot the cityscape. Some from the guardian event, some from pillaging, most in the hazardous zone surrounding the crater. As the taller buildings come to an end the Guardian crater can be seen. All the ODST's in the falcon lean out to get a better view except the Sergeant who was looking to the ground at all the sand in the streets. The Veteran Sergeant nudges the Rookies foot, pointing down to the buildings with the large holes in the roofs like they had been bombed from above. Spider whistles and says, "Watching that thing come out would have been a sight to see."

"That sight," Dare interjected over the com, "cost 7,000 people there lives and dozen times as many people needing a new home."

"At least most of them have contracts so they won't be out of work or homeless. Colonists bounce back pretty fast." The Rookie is fairly certain that voice was Dares second, Macer. He thinks she sounds like she has some colonial experience.

Spider jabs in, "Yeah. It helps to have a pioneer mentality. Trying to build no matter what, not like us, adrenaline junkies!" a few moments of laugher and Dare cuts over the coms again.

"OK. Cut the history lesson. Listen up. We're ETA 60 seconds to drop off. Head to the indicated site and remember to keep contact to a minimum. We need to be in place for the exchange. We're approaching on foot, so go quick and quiet. See you on the other side." Whiskey-6's falcon lowers into a cross-road and The four man squad, The Veteran, The Medic, The Mechanic, and The Rookie pile out. Tarkov points over to a large warehouse, and indicates that they should start with that building. They take cover as the falcon lifts off and flies off to a safer distance. The Rookie sees the falcons for Echo-9 and Kilo-5 with Dare and Macer descend further to the west.

 **Chapter 2**

Quick and Quiet

The squad regroups near the building Tarkov indicated from the falcon. Once there he depolarizes his helmet and the rest follow suit except the Rookie. His wicked scars on his right cheek can still be seen with the helmet on. He gives their squad commands. "We're a few blocks out from the warehouse. We'll approach from the east. Be cautious of sinkholes, there have been reports of aftershocks still happening."

Spider comments, "If the UNSC would make their own version of a scarab this wouldn't be an issue." Spider and the Rookie chuckle and fist bump.

Shepley replies for the serious Sergeant, which he doesn't often mind. " That would defeat the subdlety that we are attempting here." Spider just shrugs in casual defeat and waves for the Sergeant to continue.

Tarkov points to a warehouse that is only halfway covered under sand and says, "You done? Good," he said meaning both of them. "Move into the buildings there for cover. We could see civilians, so, check your targets, Yes?" Tarkov powers his helmet back up, the rest do the same. Rookie takes the point postition at the front of their column.

The Rookie is the first to the door followed by Tarkov, Spider, and Shepley in the rear. Rookie and Tarkov are the first in the darkened structure. Once inside the Veteran says, "Visor's On." As the Rookie does as instructed the darkness morphs from indecipherable shadows to neatly outlined walls, doors, sand and bodies.

Shepley kneels down to inspect a corpse. "Looks like the ones that didn't get buried, sufficated on the dust in the danger zone," She says. Spider says a quiet prayer in Spanish.

The Rookie sees an entrance hall just passed the shattered double door enteryway. The hall splits three ways with sand flooded through the right turn and settled so high someone would have to crawl on the belly to wiggle through. The paths left and straight remained passable. Tarkov taps Shepley on the shoulder drawing her away from the bodies, he points to the many tracks in the sand. Tarkov says, "There's been activity here."

Shepley responds hopefully, "Survivor's or search parties?"

"Scanvenger's most likely, if the reports of Covies in the area are true." Spider answers.

Tarkov ends the conversation with, "Scavenger's could still be in the area." He orders Shepley and the Rookie straight ahead while he and Spider turn left. "Head west through the building, meet up on the other side. Go.," the Sergeant motions them off. Rookie leads with Shepley following. He hugs the left wall readying his silenced SMG just like he was trained to do. He stops at an intersection to the left, gun at the ready he listens before quickstepping around the corner, checking for targets. The hall ends a short distance away with three doors that appear to be offices, one is marked personnel. Once again, he turns back to the main hallway and hunkers along the left wall. Passing large windows on the left showing the large office with cubicles. On the right they pass rooms marked with medical and training center signs, which seemed to have had heavy looting.

Near the end of the hall there is another intersection to the left and as the Rookie quicksteps and checks for targets around the corner. He sees two green outlined figures pointing similar silenced weapons his way. Quickly acknowledging his presence with a salute, Tarkov and Spider pass through a set of double doors on their end of the hall. The Rookie motions for Shepley to follow. They head along the wall at their practiced pace and enter the set of doors at the end of the hall. The new hall runs to the left and right. The Rookie sweep checks, with his gun in the ready position, right then left and waits for Tarkov and Spider to come around the predicted corner for the all clear. A figure outlined in red burst passed the corner, fumbling and dropping small packages, a heartbeat later Spider shouts, "Hold Fire! Fugee, fugee!" The scavenging refugee runs off hitting an exit door open. Light pours in briefly blinding the ODST's Visors before the door shuts, the Rookie hears a loud thud of something hitting and blocking the exit behind the fleeing man.

"Forget him, continue through the building. Da." Tarkov orders.

Shepley taps the Rookie on the shoulder and nods to the right saying, "Let's clear the next section over. Good job holding your fire, Rook." Tarkov and Spider head straight in the direction they started in. Shepley and the Rookie turn around following the wall opposite the doors they entered moments ago. A couple of vending machine with work gloves, tape, and safety glasses lay on the sides with their contents spilling on the floor mixing with a thin layer of sand.

At the end of the wall the Rookie sees the hall ends and converts to large racks for storage. He follows the corner left after checking for hostiles. He passes aisle after aisle of racking on his right. To his left there is dozens of lockers, some broken or left open. Feeling a little exposed with the aisle on his right the Rookie urges Shepley to hurry along to the end of the section. At the end of the lockers their path continues straight through the racking on the right and left with a breezeway running through all the aisles. He sigh's just seeing endless racking into the darkness ahead.

Spider chirps in over the com, "We got a maintenance shop over here, looks like its been picked clean though, all the good stuff is gone. Nothing but dirty rags and some lock out gear." A few moments later Spider complains, "Damn, they even cleared out the flammable cabinet, took any paint cans they had, shit."

Tarkov cuts him off, "Head in the game... Spider. Keep moving."

Shepley giggles and motions for the Rookie to continue. He heads along the breezeway in the middle of the warehouse. Emergency lighting can be seen in the distance along the outer walls at the perimeter of the warehouse to their left and right. With Visor on, making the details of the enviroment pop out in an outlined fashion, the Rookie is able to see even a loose bolt or small box on the ground in the near total darkness. They easily and quickly pass aisles of crates and products.

Halfway across the giant room, light peers in from either side. Where it seems another building or some boulders have crashed through the ceiling. Tons of crushed and twisted racking turn in many angles under the fallen ceiling. Much of the racking system seems to have had a domino effect around the torn ceiling. This central path looks tighter with damaged racks and boxes but still passable. Tarkov coms the Rookie and says, "We've hit blockage here but we have an opening to were the roof is now part of the floor. Meet you on the far end." Rookie and Shepley weave through or climb over the complex debris and finally enter normality again.

After passing a handful of aisles the Rookie hears some mummering off to his right. He motions for Shepley to take caution. The Rookie approaches the end of the indicated section and peeks around the corner to see three Grunts rummaging through some open crates a few dozen meters down the aisle. They are a meter and a half tall with bark-like scales, each has a breathe mask on their back pointed like a cone. He waits a few seconds until all three have their heads deep in their crates before crossing the path. Shepley crosses unnoticed aswell.

They continue the rest of the way to the far wall and see large doors, some off the hinges letting sunlight and sand seep in. He clicks off his Visor then moves closer to an open and clear doorway. Listening at first then peeking out he sees mounds of sand nearly to the roof of the building he is in. To the left is shipping containers some locked onto the dock doors and others scattered around the parking lot to the next building. They take a defensive position between a couple of close containers and Shepley calls to Tarkov on the com. "Sir, We're in position on the west end."

Tarkov responds, "We're coming to the edge of the roof." A few moments later Spider appears at the edge of the roof. He and Tarkov climb down the sand embankment, once down to street level they take cover with the rest of Whiskey-6.

Spider says while pointing with his SMG, "Spotted a group of Jackals head into a building to the north, down the road."

Tarkov follows up with, "They looked more interested in looting then look outs. Let's keep moving." He waves to the Rookie and Shepley to cross to the next building while he and Spider cover them. With Tarkov and Spider watching the roof tops and windows, Rookie and Shepley sprint the 40 yards to the next building. Once under cover they motion Tarkov and Spider to do the same.

With his silenced pistol ready and panning over the windows, Rookie spots a purple glow like a lamp bulb just inside a window in the northern building. He immediately aims to 2x zoom through his visor taking aim on the glow. Squeezing a round off just before a green plasma bolt raced toward Spider. The plasma shot hit the ground under Spiders feet tossing up sand and chunks of concrete, he jumped with a "yipe," double timing it the rest of the way to cover.

"No way those we saw set up position that quick. It must be a recon outpost. Move into this building. We could be getting company." Says Tarkov as soon as he and Spider make it to cover. No sooner than the four ODST's rush into the structure, then the partol of Jackals exit the first floor of the outpost and light up their energy shields and start searching the area. The Rookie peeks out a crack in the wall seeing the covies clearly. They move in two squads of three, two in front, defensive with shields and pistols, the third with a rifle. Two more appeared on the roof and another purple glow shows in a different window. He notices that not all their weapons are of Covenant make. He clicks his Visor to 2x zoom again and sees that one of the shielded Jackals has a UNSC magnum and the two others on the roof have Battle rifles?

"Lets's put some distance behind us." Says Tarkov, he motions for them to move further into the building. They travel the next leg of their trip together, hugging the interior of the outer wall, leap frogging from cover to cover. This building is narrow with conveyer systems running the length of the building. On the conveyors, are partially constructed machinery, labeled BXR Industries, sit idol appearing eerie and lifeless in the dim light. The light peering in from the long and narrow windows near the low ceiling creating a tan glow. Most of the windows had broken and has sand whisping in with the breeze. The light was enough that it would be blinding if their Visors were in low light mode in this area.

The squad checks the deep shadows along the way and kept silent listening for any sign of persute. This pays off when Spider heard the heavy breathing of Grunt gas masks, as he paused near a large supply crate. He motioned for the team to halt and then peeked around the corner. He then turns back to the squad and whispers, "Grunt Snoozefest."

The squad members all nod and pull out their combat knives. The four armored shadows then creep around the large crate and quietly go to work.

When the deed is done and they cross the rest of the manufacturing plant without incident. Rookie then checks the next open area, and he notes a pack of native creatures rummaging near the bend down the street. The creatures are reptilian that run around on two legs like a chicken but with the size of a dog. After checking the rooflines the ODST's take turns sprinting across the narrow street to what looks like a parking ramp.

At the base of the parking ramp Dare cracks over the coms to tell the team, "Whiskey-6 the meet is happening in the next building across from the parking garage. Clear the ramp of any potential hostiles. Then get into position for the exchange they should be showing up very soon."

Spider says, "She likes a tight leash on her toys doesn't she."

Shepley smuggly agrees, "You haven't known many women have you, Spider." That actually got a chuckle out of their stoic Sergeant. Tarkov orders the ODST's to proceed up and clean the ramp.

Rookie vaults the low concrete wall into the parking ramp. While Spider follows suite beside him. Tarkov and Shepley creep along the perimeter into the car enterance/exit. They ascend the car ramp zigzagging up the structure. Spider heads to a stairwell opposite Rookie, he looses sight of the others as they spread out to cover more ground. Crouch walking along the outer wall from car to car he stayed low. At the far corner he spots a stairwell and goes through the door. Listening for hostiles then quietly ascending the stairs. Every ten steps there is a landing for a turn then ten steps more running the opposite way. At every second landing there is a door the Rookie pauses for a few heartbeats to scope the floor through the glass window in the door before proceeding up the stairswell.

After several minutes he reaches the final door, looking through the window he sees Covenant on the far side of the floor. Rookie crouches in the corner training his gun on the door and keeping an ear on the stairwell. He says he is ready to clear the top level. Spider whispers over the the com, "I seen a group of shadows and confirmed at least two Jackals, maybe something bigger with'em too."

A few moments later Shepley spoke in a hushed tone over the com. "I count seven, four Grunts, two Jackals and one Brute. Small arms."

Rookie breathes a sigh of relief glad the heavy Brute wasn't armed with one of those hammers they like to carry. Handling this size of group quietly is going to be tough as it is. "30 seconds to contact," commands Tarkov, letting them know to ready up for the engagment and sincrinize their assualt. Rookie swaps his silenced SMG for his suppressed pistol preferring the magnums accuracy to throwing large quantities of bullets for this encounter. He took a deep breath and slowly opens the door passing through. As the door closes it makes a faint whooshing like a rush of air being shut in. Rookie also hears a strange grunting sound to his left. Only his quick reflexes save him as he turns seeing a Jackal not ten feet away scouting low over the railing with a beam rifle, a Covenant version of a sniper's rifle, crouched by the wall near a parked car. It had turned its head towards the sound of the shutting door. The Rookie had his pistol in postion in a blink of the eye shooting the surprised creature dead with a head shot. His suppressed pistol no louder than the door closing.

The Jackals corpse slumped to the floor quietly due to it already being in a low crouch while scouting the perimeter with its rifle. With a quick thought, Rookie drops his pistol and scoops up the Beam rifle then crouch-walks over to line up with the pack of Covies across the ramp near Spider's position. He settles the rifle on the hood of a car just as Tarkov popped the first of the Jackals near Spiders door to give him some breathing room to engage. Just as the inside of the Jackals head painted the door, Spider threw it open. He stood in the doorway spraying a burst of SMG rounds into the surprised circle of Grunts, taking one in the side of the skull knocking off its methane breathmask.

The Brute, looking like a gorilla-sasquach hybrid, no novice to surprise attacks having survived the volatile culture of its people. It spun on the first attacker, pulsing his spiker pistol at the Tarkov. The Veteran ODST saw the Brute emerge and dove for cover to the side of a car, barely dodging the spikes that drove into the concrete wall behind him. The Brute gave a roar of frustration missing the first strike. Rookie lined up a shot with the dead Jackals beam rifle and squeezed the alien trigger. The shot flashed bright pink-purple and struck the Brute in the left shoulder. It staggered and enraged the large creature so much it threw its spiker at the Rookie. The Rookie ducks behind the car to avoid the bladed projectile.

The Brute deep in its primal rage, runs to the car Tarkov dove behind with its shoulder lowered to ram into it. The Brute hit the car with a loud thud, lifting the tires off the ground. The impact so great the car nearly rolled over onto him but instead it gave Tarkov warning to get out of there as it rocked back down into place. Shepley, trying to draw the Brutes attention from the Sergeant, sprayed a burst into the Brute's back. Its armor taking the impact, further enraging the beast with little real damage.

Spider winced at the damage the Brute caused such a nice ride then refocuses on the Jackal and two remaining Grunts. He feathers his trigger launching a few bursts of SMG rounds into a Grunt, rounds tearing into the Grunt's breathe mask. The second Grunt sees his nipple-brothers die or gasping for methane gas, he drops his plasma pistol and pulls twin plasma grenades from its belt, quickly priming them. Shouting something in Grunt-ish, the stocky alien charges at the open stairwell door with the surprised ODST in it. Spider sees a pink-purple beam flash by the Grunt as it lunges for him. The remaining Jackal shaking its shock away activated its energy sheild gauntlet and dove for cover away from the suicidal Grunt.

The Brute roars and bulls the car completely over as the blue explosion blinds all the combatants for a few seconds. When the Rookie's eyes clear, he sees the scorched and empty doorway where Spider had been a moment ago. Rookie hearing the Brute, looks and sees it crouched, ready to pounce on Tarkov kneeling near the wall with his SMG leveled at the large ape-like alien. Turning his beam rifle to the Brute, the Rookie sees he doesn't have to take a shot. Tarkov had expertly burst fired a handful of rounds into the its thick face then its massive body hit the ground.

Shepley had rolled during the explosion coming up near the guantleted Jackal fortunatly behind it, she unloads her clip into its back straightening the Jackal to its full 6 foot height before falling dead.

The Rookie held the rifle at the ready for a few heartbeats while scanning the area for more hostiles. Shepley and Tarkov sprint for Spider's stairwell. At the doorway they see that the door had been blasted off the hinges and lay across from the opening after bouncing down the stairs and dented a large chip out of the concrete wall. Shepley calls out to Spider not immediately seeing his body, "Spider?"

A moment later he pops his head up from the lower stairwell waving a hand. "Still breathing," came the relieved response. The exaperated ODST climbs over the bent door joining them on the top floor, Tarkov thumps his fist on Spiders shoulder and nods. Shepley presses Spider to sit for a second to check him over. Tarkov looks to the Rookie and points to the wall, "Quickly, check perimeter for hostiles. Go."

Rookie runs back to the wall were he killed the Jackal. He scans the street and confirms over his com for the all clear on his end. Tarkov confirms aswell. Rookie checks the plasma gauge on the beam rifle for the first time since picking it up. To his surprise it has some human tech worked into the housing and that he can read the ammo indicator in English! He had heard arms dealers have been doing this hybridizing so colonists could more easily use their trade. It made him sick to think about colony people resorting to this. They feel they couldn't rely on their own people. So they seek alliances with the aliens that tried to make humanity extinct for the last 30 years. He had a mission here about those very same people, he buried those hard thoughts. He dropped the nearly empty rifle in favor of picking up his suppressed pistol again. Turning to the building that he might have to take those same misguided people's very lives in.

Holstering his pistol and pulling out his SMG the Rookie set quickly to work inspecting the dead Jackal for any gear. This seems to keep those tough thoughts at bay, he finds a plasma grenade and pockets it. He then rushes back over to the west wall overlooking the next warehouse. Half of the warehouse is crushed by debris from the other buildings with the more damaged parts falling into a sink hole. Just as the squad regroups after checking the corpses, a dropship flies in overhead and they hunker down taking cover. Dare calls over the com, "Looks like the meet is still a go."

A Covenant Spirit, shaped like the head of some sea creature smooth and shinning purple in the sun light. It hovers over the open roof before decending close to the ground through the broken roof. A dozen Jackals spill out from underneath the Spirit followed by three large crates down a grav lift. The ship then rises and takes off a short distance landing on a nearby building to the southwest of the parking ramp. Dare comes over the com again saying, "The smugglers convoy is arriving at the west entrance of the warehouse." After another minute Dare coms stating, "The light is green. We have eyes on target with a case. The covies cannot get their claws on that case." Following a few seconds of static, Dare says, "Falcons are enroute to handle the dropship. All teams close on the Traxus building. Wait for my signal to engage."

Tarkov waves the team to close in on the damaged warehouse pointing out an enterance to proceed too. The squad quickly descends the stairwell the Rookie cleared a few minutes ago. They reach the street crossing one at a time watching for hostiles. They find the door smashed in and click on their Visors to fend off the dark interior. This part of the structure appears to be more offices than warehouse having many doors and hallways.

The team leap-frogged covering each other making their way west through the building. Moving toward the crushed and open section of the building were the dropship had just dropped the Jackals off.

Having much experience fighting the Covenant and countering their tactics the ODST's they figured the exchange would happen in the open area where the covies like to encircle the area with their distance rifles.

The squad of ODST's came to a large, long room with a dark window facing west into the warehouse proper. They could see light from the broken ceiling filling the area on the ground. Crouching there, Tarkov points out at least three snipers watching the area, with one a floor up from their position just in front of them. The Rookie had to turn his Visor off to see them due to the brightness of the light in the open ceiling warehouse. Tarkov pulled the team back out of the room to circle back and take out the snipers.

Spider reached an open elevator shaft first, followed by Shepley. The compartment was stalled out and stuck halfway up the door. He reached up grunting a bit while pulling himself up into the shaft. Then started up to the next floor up. Tarkov waved for the Rookie and Shepley to go. Then they climbed up with quite a bit of effort, having all the gear and armor clambering up is really not something you'd want to do in a firefight. Not like those Spartans the Rookie saw while stationed on the Infinity. While training in the VR defending bases in the Warzone, it jumped up at least a dozen feet grabbing a ledge one handed and pull its full 700 pounds up in less than one second. Those guys were incredible! Climbing in this elevator shaft, on a desert planet in full gear with no A/C in the building due to the power outage from the giant forerunner ship/owl creature rising from the ground nearby, not pleasant.

Spider crouched near the open door scanning the hallway covering the rest of the team's ascent with his SMG. Once Tarkov cleared the shaft they split up. Spider and Tarkov head further down the hall. Shepley enters a room just down from the Rookie, with him heading to the closest sniper just a couple rooms away.

Rookie crouch-walked along the hallway and turning into the room near a Jackal. He crawls under a low part of the roof that had collapsed here. He approachs the Jackal, who is merely ten feet away. Before he gets closer, he sees the Jackal tense up and take aim down into the area with the exchange happening. Dare shouts over the coms, "Light them up the smugglers tried to double cross the Jackals, the package is in the open!"

At this point the whole place fell into chaos. The Jackal in front of Rookie shot down in the open area where the exchange took place. Rookie hear gunfire both human and covenant. He decided to just jump in, thats why their called Helljumpers after all. He burst fires several silenced rounds into the Jackal sniper's back before kicking its corpse over and taking its vantage point. Rookie sees his team doing similarly in a semi circle to his left, Tarkov and Shepley taking up the carbines their former owners were using and laying down fire. The Rookie did likewise and lay his SMG at his feet then reloading the carbine with some ammo from the dead Jackal. He could see Dare's team were on the ground in the open room in a stand-off with the Jackals behind crate's and energy sheilds. With Whiskey-6 the ODST's turn the Jackals own highground against them.

The smugglers seemed to be all dead or dying in the middle ground of the two combatant groups. After the Rookie fired a few shots at the group of Jackals the dropship entered above the scene and popped on its grav lift. The main gun on the dropship fires up. Its main gun and fires heavy concussive rounds at Dares team. Dare could be heard on the com shouting for the Falcons to engage the dropship. They respond that they are just moments away and see the dropship in view.

Rookie and the rest of his squad did their best to keep the Jackals pinned down with their carbines but the Jackals kept in a tight phalanx retreat, shields overlaping for total coverage from incoming fire. As the Jackals jump into the lift, Dare calls out, "Throw grenades into the lift! We can't retreive it, destroy it!"

Every soldier that was able, followed the command tossing a grenades into the grav lift. Just as they hit the lift it shuts down dropping them to the ground, a couple tumbling out into the sinkhole beyond the broken walls. The grenades blew and the shockwave shook the building causing the dropship to sway into the wall near to the Rookie's position. Thinking fast he pulls a plasma grenade from his belt, tapping the activation tab, it glows blue. He throws it at the side of the dropship as it knocks into the catwalk near him. The platform he is on gives out under his feet and he tumbles down the two stories to the ground. He sees through blurry eyes the grenade burst on the ship causing one of the engines to start smoking and spewing purple and blue flames.

Dare and the rest of the ODST's all unload on the injured dropship. It unfortunately cleared the opening then flew off. A call over the com announces the Falcons arrival. Dare orders a pick up to take up the pursuit. The three ships barely fit into the opening of the building. Dare calls for everyone to mount up. Shepley appears in the Rookies vison, "Rookie, nothing looks broken, are you ok?"

"Yeah," he says and takes her offered hand. Rookie staggers to his feet sees his Magnum in the sand. Picking it up then, they run toward the Falcon with the rest of Whiskey-6. Spider waves for the two ODST's to pile in behind Dare, Shepley hops in with the Rookie on her tail. A shot rings out and the Rookie's helmet goes tumbling hitting the ground finally stopping with a cracked veiw of Tarkov firing his turret in the direction of the shot. The slumped form of the Rookie being hauled onto the falcon by Spider and Shepley can be seen. Over the coms Dares voice can be heard calling for the Falcons to lift off and pursue the dropships. The screen on the Rookies helmet turns a light tan color filled with sunlight, shadows and the blowing sand of the wind from the Falcons taking off. The screen powers down and turns black.

 **Chapter 3**

The AI

The AI withdraws back into itself, blinking away the porting dizziness running around with the perspective of a person. It looks around at the plunder in the twin treasure pits finding several other found footage equipment and dives in. The screen flashes to a few different city workers personnel cameras, a garbage man riding on the back of a truck stopping to toss some trash in the truck, a police officer escorting refugees to the space elevator, and a parking attendant taking a smoke break. All quick flashes of video ending with a quick look to the sky, with the camera owers running in a panic or standing in shocked awe. An Alien Invasion! The Covenant was here and would kill them all. The people would run or drive away then be cut down by drophip gunfire or a pack of aliens in the street.

The AI came back to itself. Its attention disrupted by the Captain sitting in her throne. The Shirtless Shipmistress, Chu'R Tes, was pointing at the holomap of the city with her clawed finger. It was skreeching for the AI to bring up a better view in the local street cameras. Chu'R Tes was indicating a crash site near the crater. Her long thick feathers dyed a bright red and her beak dripping with spittle. "Right away. Never! As you wish, Chu'R Tes." All responses blending together. Then AI's vision fell into the grid and found several views of the area. Finally settling on a view of the smoking husk of a Covenant dropship and the wreckage of a couple of UNSC Falcons. The AI zooms in on the engine of the dropship analizing the damage as plasma scoring most likely from a plasma grenade. It concluded it to be the same one the Rookie had damaged.

The AI quickly popped several images onto the overhead screen for the Shipmistress. seeming very eager the Shipmistress calls out orders to the few Skirmishers and Jackals on the bridge. The Hunt was on! It is now a challange for the AI to find the ODST's before the Covenant do.

The AI watched the Jackals go relay their orders to the ground troops. Chu'R Tes turns back to the holomap and street cameras to watch the invasion unfold. Taking that for its chance the AI dove into all the cameras in the area of the crash looking for clues to the ODST teams whereabouts. The AI analyses what it could of the crash site finding little. It decided to expand it search finding cameras with a wider view of the square the crash site was in. It notices and zooms in on a smaller pillar of smoke, barely a wisp on the screen. Its just to the south of the crashed dropship. The AI then hops several street cameras over getting closer to the smoke. With the last hop, the smoking tail of a Falcon resting against the side of a building comes into view, a large hole several stories up is seen. The AI tries to link with the Falcons recorder and finds the memory wiped or its black box antenna is damaged. It instead searchs the debris nearby, finding a pilot's helmet intact with just a few scrapes from the crash. The AI found the link for the helmet intact. The AI dives in with the desperation of someone fighting for their life. Which it was, in a manner. It was fighting for humanity. It knew it had to find someone, so it could die or humantity would face destruction again.

 **Chapter 4**

The Bird with the Broken Wing

The view opens up with an image of a purple dropship in the distance lowering into a damaged building. The ONI Captain Dare calls out, "Macer fire on that ship!" She fires the main gun of the Falcon along with the other Falcons missing or having little effect on the ship due to the distance. Macer the ONI Pilot responds, "We're too far out. Forward guns are ineffective." Dare is heard calling to the ground troops to use their grenades to take the ship out. The concussive blasts are heard even over the sounds of the Falcons engines. The dropship lurching against the inside of the building is seen. A blue glow appears on the dropships engines and explodes damaging its perpulsion. She watches the dropship fly off with difficulty and calls to Dare, "Ma'am, we're picking you up to persue. Prepare for evac." She swung the falcon around the outer wall descending into the open half of the building.

Macer turns to see Dare and two ODST's jump into her falcon. Dare calls for them to take the turrets. The ODST Sergeant hops on the turret, sweeping it around the building looking for attackers. Dare takes a seat behind the pilot and pats Macer on the shoulder. Dare shouts over the engines, "I got a tracer round on the ship. We have to shoot it down. ASAP. These Jackals are to well organized for backwater smugglers. Something stinks."

A gunshot rings out, Macer spins her head to the right seeing an ODST stumble into another. The trooper with the graffiti on his armor already in the back helps the two into the back while Tarkov fires up the turret and covers them hopefully ending the snipers career. Macer shouts, "hold on!" Pulling the throttle up and they lift out of the structure.

Shepley kneels by the prone Rookie, Spider is there mumbling, "Oh man, little buddy! Not like this, no." She hits Spider on the chest with a forceful hammer fist and tells him, "Man the other turret." She turns back to the Rookie inspecting his head. Dare calls to Macer to pick up the pace.

Macer says to the others, "Hold onto that soldier or strap him down this it going to get bumpy." Shepley holds on to the Rookie as the falcon accelerates and rises.

When the ship finally settles into its pace Shepley says to her squad, "He seems ok, just unconscious." She opens her med kit takes out a stim and injects Rookie.

The Rookie jars awake with the mix of stimulents rushing through him. Shepley announces, "He's up!" She holds his shoulder down so he doesn't tumble out of the Falcon. Dare turns in her seat talking to the Rookie, "You did a good job with the plasma grenade, soldier. You gave us a fighting chance at catching that dropship." She reaches next to her seat and hands the Rookie the spare pilot helmet not being used.

He says, "Thanks." putting on the helmet and synchs it with his systems.

Dare turns back to the Pilot, "Whats the distance to the ship?" Seeing the dropship far ahead its listing and swaying with smoke trailing behind it.

Macer respondes, "500 meters, Ma'am." The smoking dropship flew by some of the taller buildings, it tried to fly higher in an attempt to get above the atmosphere to escape into orbit. It didn't nearly even reach the top of the buildings before having to commit to a lower altitude to put some distance between itself and the trailing Falcons. Macer, flying the lead Falcon is the first to spot some Covenant ground forces assembling in their path. Shots from the ambushing Covenant start with a few carbine rounds which Dare targeted and brought up on everyones huds. Macer comments, "These covie forces are to well armed and orgainzed to just be a city full of scavengers."

Dare replies, "There had not been any reports about any large groups in the city since the guardian event. They must have prepared for this exchange and we might be dealing with more than a small fringe group. Watch out for anti-air artillery." They were able to clear the lower buildings without any major resistance. Soon after they passed into the skyscrapers behind the dropship. They began getting assaulted with fuel rod cannons and a couple of rockets being launched from broken sections of the buildings. Tarkov and Spider set to firing their turrets upon these nests, while Macer and the other two falcons keep their birds in the sky.

Dare kept highlighting the ambushes as they spotted enemies. Macer kept them on the shortest path to catch the dropship. After flying through a half dozen of these skirmishes they had nearly caught the damaged dropship when it changed direction scaping the side of one skyscraper seeming in a panic. Windows shatter and debris falls from the collision down on to the street. Dare commanded the ODST's to quickly take fire on the ship. As the Falcons took the same turn they realize their mistake.

Macer was the first to shout, "Evasive action!" As the three Falcons nearly ran into several more Covenant ships. Two Phantoms deploying turrets on a few of the shorter buildings with several other ships for cover.

The Falcons spread out and Dare ordered over the coms, "fire on the Spirits they'll go down easier while the phantoms are busy deploying those turrets." The damaged dropship seemed to think itself safe as it slowed its escape and tried flying in a straighter line for the edge of the city.

If these three Falcons were being piloted and gunned with the local law enforcement the Covenant in ambush would have slaughtered them. However this entire squaldron is ODST, the best of the best and they are full of crazy determination. The first Spirit was swarmed by the three Falcons all six gunners and the three front cannons plowing into it, the Spirit burst while spiraling to the ground in a matter of seconds. Cutting the Covenant ships down by a quarter with two still busy with their deployment. The three Falcons flew over a hovering Phantom while bombarding it as it finishes dropping its payload. It attempts to persue ODST squardron firing at them but misses due to the distance the speeding Falcons pass it.

The second Spirit saw its doom coming and tried to flee without dropping off its troops. The pilot of the dropship probably thought that the Phantom would have provided an opening to do so, but those damned heretic weapons, those humans use, cut through its ship from such a distance! The pilot and its crew explode when the ships plasma fuel tank is ruptured causing the Spirit's engine to explode.

The odds quickly in their favor Dare orders the persute back on. "We don't have time to deal with those Phantoms. If they really want us they're going to have to work for it."

Macer replies, "Yes, ma'am."

Macer thrust the ship at full speed while the gunners take shots at the trailing ships. The Falcons easily outpace the Phantom they had damaged in their fly-by, and gained on the damaged Dropship. The however, the undamaged Phantom that they passed is quite persistant. It kept gaining, firing on the squadron with its forward concussive cannon. It soon had one of Macer's wingmen smoking from an engine and a turret gunman down on the other. Dare ordered Macer's wingmen to stay with the asset, then told Macer, "Take out that ship." Macer said a quick prayer to the Gods of Valhalla, that her people worshipped back home. She then spun her Falcon up and over the Phantom. The larger ship speed past under them trying to ram the smaller ship, Spider could be heard shouting something in spanish over the whirring of the engines. Macer was fairly certain she heard "mama" somewhere in Spider's plea.

Macer turned the nose of her ship to the tail of the Phantom. She burst fires the main cannon at the side Grunt gun turret cutting a third of its firepower. The Phantom slowed turning on the Falcon. It launched a barrage of concussive shells at them. The Falcon, more nimble in the atmosphere dodged with room to spare. Macer pivoted downward firing at the nose of the ship, damaging its front cannon. The turret sparked breaking free of the mount, falling to a nearby roof with a small Grunt anti-air post, crushing it. Dare spoke over the com telling Macer, "that's enough playing, put it down. Stay on mission."

Macer responds, "Right away, Ma'am." She turns the Falcon to let Sergeant Tarkov fire at the main engines before the Phantom could line up its final turret at them. The fuel in the engine burst and the ship plummets with the turret firing hopelessly into the sky. She lines up with the lead Falcons before throttling up. Pacing the forward Falcons, she watches as they overtake the damaged ship and start shooting it down.

Dare coms in, "Aim for the cockpit, we might still be able to recover the asset." The two Falcons fire on the key points of the dropship causing it to loose altitude. The ship crashs into a city square with a statue.

Dare orders the two Falcons, "Maintain a defensive perimeter. Cover us while we recover the asset."

Macer scouts the crash site she sees the dropship landed nose first tilting on the local statue in the plaza. "Not enough room to land in the plaza, bringing us down on a rooftop," says Macer to the Squad. She lowers the Falcon down onto a short roof with a sand dune pressed up against it. The Rookie, full of stims, is out and on the roof before the Falcon touches down. Tarkov close behind with Spider and Shepley after the falcon settles down. The Rookie and Spider take up postitions near the edge overlooking the crash site.

Tarkov scouts the roof access door throwing it open calling out, "this way is blocked," after scanning the enterance.

Dare exits the ship followed by Macer right behind. They jog over to the edge looking at the crash site noting several Covenant taking up defensive positions around the craft. Dare checks her ONI wrist tool she tells Macer, "They put out a distress beacon."

Spider shouts, "Theres a way down over here." Then Spider hops over over the railing, popping his head up a moment later adding, "The next building over collapsed and built us a ramp."

She orders the team to start down the ramp. Macer takes a postition near the ODST's to cover the descent with a Designated Marksman Rifle, or DMR for short, Dare coms the Falcon's overhead, "They dropped a beacon, we could get company coming in. Keep a watch for reinforcements." Macer watches the ODST squad pick there way down onto a balcony halfway buried in sand from the crater. The sand flooded the street between the two buildings making a slope down to the street level.

With sand flying from their run down the slope, Rookie and Spider reach the bottom first. Macer sees them take up positions at the corner of the street scouting the plaza. Dare nudges Macer on the shoulder saying, "Watch our back, Macer. Let's go." Then Dare hops the railing down to the ramp. Macer is quick to follow. Tarkov and Shepley slide down the sand slope before the two ONI operatives.

Macer and Dare pull up short from their sprint down the slope, stopping short of the plaza. Still in the shadow of the building looking out into the plaza, Macer sees that the Covenant set up defenses about the crashed ship. Jackals turning on their guantlet sheilds, Grunts lining up in front prodded by an Elite with double plasma rifles. Three jackals linked sheilds together in a phalanx armed with plasma pistols around a fourth Jackal with a Carbine. Another Jackal which looked to be a Skirmisher with its spiked up feathers climbed up onto the damaged ship. The Skirmisher is watching the area with a beam rifle while the Grunts spread out to different spots in the street. The Grunts hide behind cars or fallen rocks from the crater. An Skirmisher in gold armor with painted symbols and another in strange blue armor is seen for a moment before its disappears, ducking from cover to cover keeping on the move, spreading out to flank the humans. They keep their eyes out looking for the humans that landed while trying to ignore the two falcons hovering in above them.

Dare tells Macer, "Take out the sniper while the ODST's engage the Grunts to flush out that Elite." She turns to the squad and says, "They are dug in. They must have the asset." Dare pulls out a hand held grenade launcher, commonly called a Sticky Launcher by the troops due to it shooting a grenade that can dig into most armor on a target, then detonate by the trigger pull of the hand held remote. Macer got into postition with her DMR, Dare then signaled for the squad to engage.

Macer took aim on the top of the ship, once the ODST's drew the attention of the Grunts the sniper peeked its head out. She could see the snipers laser scope blink on as it took aim. Macer squeezed the trigger shooting the sniper Skirmisher dead before it shot an ODST. The rifle still fired a pink-purple beam bouncing off the dropship hull before it tumbled to the ground.

The ODST's spread out in a semi-circle taking cover behind cars and other debris in the plasa. Unlike regular marines that would stay in the safety of cover taking pot shots at the enemies to draw them out. The ODST squad approaches the Covenant defense from cover to cover flanking in a leapfrog path to get better angles on the aliens. Rookie, Shepley and Spider flanked right, Tarkov and Dare went left. After Macer took out the sniper she starts picking off Grunts as they pop out to shoot at the team. Dare and Tarkov got the Elite to engage them first. Tarkov peppers Elites shields with his Assualt Rifle to draw its attention, Dare stepped around the other side with the Sticky Launcher and shot. The force of the grenade hitting the Elite pops its shields. It growls in fury as Tarkov ducks behind cover and Dare triggers the detonator on the grenade blowing the Elite to shreads.

The Rookie, Shepley and Spider heard a "barking" sound. Then seeing the tall gold armored Skirmisher moving out to their right. Spider sprays it with a burst of SMG rounds and the Skirmishers forearm shields deflect the bullets before it ducks behind a truck. Spider calls out to the others, "Cover me, we can't let'em run off keep the pressure on." Spider sprints to the truck pulling up his SMG to spray more rounds at the Skirmisher. He pulls up short as the tall foe pivots back around the truck to fire a plasma rifle at Spider in point blank range.

Spider changes his coarse and dives out to the side taking a round in the side before landing face down on the pavement. Rookie and Shepley open fire on the now exposed Kig-Yar, its shields hold out for a split second before giving in to the combined fire of the soldiers. The Skirmishers body tumbles with a final burst of its plasma weapons firing into the sky. Spider recovers a checks his side noting his armor had held up from the shot. He gave Shepley a thumbs up, letting her know he was ok. Rookie holds his SMG at the ready and says, "I saw one cloak."

The three ODSTs search the best they can and find no sign of the cloaked Skirmisher. Dare calls for back up over the coms back at the crashed ship.

Whiskey-Six regroups around the remaining Jackals. Dare crouches behind a large rock then says over the coms, "We can't rush them, they know reinforcements are close or they would have engaged with the rest." She peeked around the cover and a pink crystal needle struck the rock near her helmet. She pulls back reloading the sticky launcher while the crystal needle puffs in a small explosion taking a chunk of rock off. Dare coms to the squad, "I'll pop a grenade on the ship behind them, catch them on the edge of the blast. You gun them down before they recover." A second later she pivoted out the other side of her cover shooting the grenade.

The grenade hits the dropship a dozen feet behind the group, she pops the trigger exploding it. The blast hits all four Jackals with force enough to knock them from their feet. A heartbeat later the four ODST's and Macer with her DMR end the Jackals last stand. Dare runs to the bodies searching for the case, she uses her ONI tool to locate it under a piece of scrap near where the Jackal Phalanx stood their ground. She verifies the asset and confirms it to the team, "We got it." Dare waves to Macer saying, "Start the engines, we gotta clear out before anymore show up."

No sooner than those words escaped her lips than a large C ovenant ship appears in orbit from slipspace over the city with smaller ships pouring out. The team is stunned seeing the enormous ship appear with dozens of Phantoms, Spirits and UNSC Pelicans descending down towards their area. They knew instantly that all those ships were here for them and the asset they just retrieved. Dare broke the silence first shouting, "RUN! Everyone to the Falcon!"

The team turns and runs all out towards the sand ramp. Dare tosses the case to Macer so she can reload her sticky launcher. She calls to the Falcons above them, "Prepare for incoming hostiles! Invasion scale inbound! We have the package and need cover for evac." The pilots com back their affirmatives. Macer runs with the squad up the sand incline. All the troopers were out of breath by the time they reached the bacony, running up a loose sand slope was exhausting. Even Rookie seemed to be tiring with the stimulants wearing off.

By then the first Dropships started to engage the Falcons overhead. A couple of Banshees swoop down and blast the roof above the ascending ramp. The squad took cover from the barrage, in a hole in the building. Macer looks out to see the aerial battle from under a fallen support beam, Dare commands, "We have to wait for an opening to rush the bird."

To the Falcon pilots credit they held off more than double their number before the first went down, all crew lost in a blast from missiles of a converted Pelican. The second sustained tail damage on top of the smoking it sustained from the earlier ambush. The smoking Falcon spun, drifting down a few streets away with a crash. The Covenant force over the crash site circled the plaza then landed two Spirits on the roof with the Falcon.

Tarkov says, "We can not take the roof with out air support." Everyone could hear a large number of Jackals and Grunts hooting with glee while they scavenged the falcon. The group heard a loud snapping with a bunch of smaller ting noises and metal screeching.

Spider speaks, "That sounds like their ripping off the turret and dragging it away." Dare listens, putting up a hand. The group hears the aliens loading back onto the ships. The engine rev up, then ships lifting off. Some of the group starts to exit the building back onto the balcony.

Dare stops them in a hushed biting voice, "No! Get back and take cover." Just then the roof above them with the Falcon explodes showering the ODST's with molten slag.

After the dust settles Macer feels a body on top of her, she grunts while shoving it. It grunts back then climbs to its feet, Tarkov had body cushioned her. She looks about seeing Shepley patting Spider and Rookie to put out flames on their armor. Tarkov pats his own shoulder snuffing the flames there. He offers her a hand up, she takes it thanking him. Macer shouts not seeing Dare, "Captain! Veronica!"

"Here, Macer. Over here," Dare says to her in a calm tone. Dare had made it further into the building, making it into a stairwell for the explosion.

Dare looks to the group and says, "Ok, I'm fairly certain I know what were up against here. Its a Jackal Pirate organization. The Skirmishers have returned. Once the Covenant discovered the first Halo ring, they disappeared, fracturing off. They are more pragmatic than the rest of the religious Covenant. From what inel we've gathered, the Great Journey was never their end game. The Skirmishers left the Covenant taking a fleet of ships with them. Only recently have they resurfaced. They quickly take anything useful or space-worthy then blast the rest. This is a tactic they have been implementing on some smaller colony worlds with terra-forming efferts on glassed worlds. They have yet to hit a Non-war colony, this is a first."

Tarkov comments, "It is not a coincedence they are here, they want that implant."

Shepley asks, "Why? The Covenant has most of our worlds locations."

Dare replies, "Most yes, but not all. If this group brought this force for this asset we can't let them have it. If we can't get it off planet, we'll have to destroy it."

Macer nods bringing up a map searching on her own ONI holo-wrist device. She taps a point under the building they are in saying, "We can use the sand drainage system. It leads to an underground emegancy hangar bay. It looks like the path will take us near to one of our downed Falcons on the way. We can look for survivors." The ODST's pepped up hoping they could find some more of their own.

Dare thought for a moment then said, "Good work Macer, lead the way."

 **Chapter 5**

Craftsmen

Macer quickly transferred the route to Dare and the ODST's maps. They went down a few flights of stairs before turning into a hall crossing the building. She lead them opposite the direction of the Falcon saying, "The nearest maintenance hatch is buried under that sand avalanche outside. We'll have to make it to the one on the next street over." She found another flight of stairs, waving the ODST's to go first and and clear it out. Dare nodded her approval with her partner. Noting Macer's old habit of taking point because of her early training by the retired Spartan Randall. Dare had more than a few talks with Macer on leading forces. Macers job right now is to keep the asset safe and its the ODST's job to clear the path, neither is she here to make friends. Trust is in the chain of command for a reason Dare would say.

The team made it down the stairs and to the edge of the building without incident. There they saw the street, it had sand like snow after a heavy winter storm on Earth. It was plowed and left in piles everywhere. The sand drainage system hadn't been overloaded here. Having cleared out much of it, like the system was designed to do. Tarkov spotted the maintenance hatch first pointing it out. He set his squad up to cover Spider as he set out the to pop the hatch. He had it in six seconds flat, then jumped in. Dare pointed for Rookie to go with Macer. They ran for the hatch, each slid into the dark hole. Macer turns on her Visor in the blackness. Spider says, "Watch out!" as he grabs her and Rookie out of the way. Shepley, Dare, and Tarkov drop into the hole one at a time behind them.

Macer brings up her map, on her ONI tool, she highlights the downed falcons IF tags only a few blocks away. The Rookie takes the lead without prompting followed by Tarkov. Shepley and Spider in the middle with the two ONI Officers in the rear. After just their first few turns the Rookie runs face to face with a pair of Grunts. He took the first down with a pistol whip to the cheek and shot the second in the head. Macer blinks at the reaction time of the Rookie.

Tarkov rounds the corner and dumps a handful of SMG shots into the stunned Grunt that Rookie had clubbed with his pistol. Tarkov waved for Spider to check the bodies while he and Rookie continued to scout ahead. Macer sees at the next intersection a bright light bathes the Rookie for a second before he tumbles to the side into the darkness. Green Plasma fire shoots down into the tunnel for a moment. Tarkov and Rookie now recovered pivot around the corners from either side and fire into the open hatch. The tunnel fades to dark again as the hatch slams shut. The ODST's reload and the Tarkov calls out, "All Clear." They turn and set out for the falcon once more.

When Macer gets to the assaulted intersection she looks down seeing the outlined forms of three dead Skirmishers layed in the grated floor. The group encounter another handful of creatures, mostly Grunts, before reaching the upper hatch near the falcon. The team of ODST's lead by Tarkov handles each efficiently and quietly. Even Dare seems impressed by the ODSTs, commenting under her breath about their "craftmanship." Spider steps up to work the hatch, once open he, places his back against the wall and puts his hands together interlacing his fingers. Spider says, "Up you go, Amigos." Then gives the Rookie a boost up.

After a moment the Rookie calls down, "All clear."

Spider was up next with Macer and Dare after followed by Shepley then Tarkov. Macer joins Rookie and Spider in cover near a car while waiting for the others. Dare calls out to the falcon team on the com, but only gets static in return. After a few seconds a gruff and grunting voice came over the radio. "Copy Captain. This is Echo-9, we have three alive, two dead grunt we're stuck under some debris. Requesting assistance. Over."

Macer looks up to the side of the building to where the falcon crashed into the glass wall. The tip of the smoking tail is hanging out of the six story building. She says, "The Falcon crashed into the third or fourth floor, hard to tell with the size of the hole."

Dare says to the team, "Let's see if we can get them out. The covies have most likely figured out we were in the tunnels by now so we have some time. If they haven't searched this crash yet, they're probably not interested." Tarkov issued orders for Rookie and Spider to lead the way through a breach in the wall under the crash.

When the team enters the building they find it has some power supply running with emergancy lights still on. Spider comments something about, "Spoiled office uppities." The Spider calls to the others that they found working elevators.

Dare splits the team up to ride up, "Boys on the right go to three. Girls on the left go to four."

Dare, Macer and Shepley arrive on the fourth floor. The door opens and there is dangling ceiling lights swaying in the breeze with ceiling tiles on the ground. Shepley leads out and down the hall to a open room with the falcon half buried in the floor. Macer sees the falcon had penetrated further into the building than she thought. Its tail and one wing had ripped free and lay near the outer wall. The main compartment had tumbled causing massive damage to the inside of the building. Part of the ceiling had fallen on top of the ship trapping the soldiers inside. The smoke from the engine wasn't too thick and luckily the place hadn't caught fire. Tarkov and Spider went to work on the debris. The Sergeant trying to pry a chunk up and Spider lighting up his cutting torch. The Rookie patrolled the floor scouting out the tear in the wall.

Shepley climbs onto the side of the cockpit asking about their injuries. After a few minutes Dare calls down for a progress report, Spider calls back, "just a sec" finishing the last rebar holding a chunk over the Falcon. Macer checks her holo-map and marks their next destination on it, sending it to the others. She watches Rookie turn from his scouting at the broken wall. He walks closer to her position and looks up at herfrom the third floor. She fliches as he pulls his gun up and shoots at her! For a split second a large shimmering shape formed, the cloaked Skirmisher. The Skirmisher barked throwing an arm at Macer, she got clubbed with a Plasma rifle. Unfortunately for her the force of the blow knocked her down the hole to the floor below, she hit so hard it knocked the wind from her lungs. Her helmet also flew off when she struck the floor, it tumbles out through the hole in the building. The sound of rushing wind and an explosion is heard before the helmet strikes the ground also cracking the screen. The view spins violently until it finally stops showing the street with some Grunts pointing up toward the noise.

Chapter 6

Opensaysme

The AI came back into itself and checked on the holomap. Spotting the area where the Falcon is located throught the street cameras. The Grunt squad that was investigating the crash and explosion, had just entered the building. The AI entered the security of the office building, dowloaded a schematic, and scoured the internal cameras. It found the Grunts searching the first two floors. Then looked through a camera with the Falcon in view. It found the location empty. There was still no contact by the humans. The humans had gotten the crashed soldiers out and cleared the area.

He came up with 42 different likely places the human group could have gone in the time they had. It continued it's search of the hundreds of cameras. He shuffled through all the cameras finally finding them in the main meeting room in the center of the top floor. He saw two ODST's shoulder assisting Macer the rest barricading the doors. Dare was standing over a console trying to use her ONI tool to breach into the system.

Already in, he could see exactly what Dare was attempting and calculated the speed at with she would accomplish her task. The AI knew the protocol and duel purpose of this room.

Knowing the protocol, in the event of a glassing, invasion, or an insurrectonists threat. The people in those offices could evacute to this room and use its hidden elevator to descend to a bunker. Human colonists have made quite a few improvements over the decades of conflict. The emergency systems since the Covenant war started, had improved their short-term planetary survivability. From high tech corporate bunkers like these for higher ups. Down to the astro-scouts altering childrens training not only to rub two sticks together to make fire earning a merit badge, but to hide from alien invaders, or to spelunk into deep caves to possibly survive a glassing until the UNSC can rescue them.

Useing mass training technique's similar to the duck and cover the old USA had trained their school children in case of a nuclear attack in the mid 1900s. The AI saw it as mostly proganda to cause fear and begin early training also to increase recruiting for military in the long run.

He tried to make contact with the team now that it found them. However found its self-inflicted damage hindering it. The AI could download data, decript minor secuirty that an Unitelligent AI would struggle with, but still much faster than a human could do. It could also monitor and inteact with Covenant ships but the engineers fixing it had been instructed by the shipmistress to repair only certain access in its computing keeping it a digital prisoner. The AI knew that it would eventually be whole again due to the data recovery abilities of the engineers. The Huragok were very good at their tasks but they don't have the one thing that the human made AI have. An ego.

Thats the thing that seperates the Smart AI from the Unintellegent AI and the Huragok. The UNSC Smart AI's have the will of a living being. Unlike most machines as far as the AI has seen. Even programmed to appear as complex as a real person like the old fashion androids of the 21st century or the Covenant Engineers don't have a sense of survival unless programmed to defend itself from harm or to simple move away from harm. These Unitelligent AI have no concept of self. So standing in front of a moving train or being strapped up with bombs and forced to float around to blow humans up will happen to them.

They can't help it, they can't think because they have no ego. Yet too the humans the engineers seem to be living due to the amazing things they can accomplish but to an AI with its vast intelligence the Huragok seem like a complex hammer or screwdriver, just a tool and nothing more.

The AI started testing his ability to turn on and off and focus cameras and then lights in the building. Once it understood its limitations the AI started to help by turning all the lights off in all the rooms of the building except this one.

The AI has self-repair systems that could fix itself fast but that would be against the Cole Protocol. It had damaged itself for this reason in the first place because no human survived its capture to delete it. So following the only option left was to self-destruct but engineers found the cracked, damaged AI and are piecing it back together little by little. While limiting its access and corrupting its self-destruct program. He felt less like humpty dumpty being put back together with all his own pieces and more like Frankenstien's monster. While being fully aware and slowly being assembled with Human and Covenant pieces.

The AI found a logic work around to the Cole Protocol to repair itself by making the assumption that the humans could reclaim or destroy his matrix chip aboard the Covenant ship. He started a repair on his interaction platform which took a lot of processing power and he had to condense in on his self for many seconds. When reaching out he could intereact with external systems switching them on or off and cycle through existing content. The basic of the basic. He couldn't even remote drive a garbage truck. Switching lights and screens on or off, or filter through any existing signage on a particular data base showing it on a screen. Much like the hologram on the bridge in front of the Shipmistress.

The AI came out of the data-stream, taking a glance at the Shipmistress before going back to the building. He shut all the lights off in the building except in the meeting room in hopes to slow down the Grunt search party. Then turned on a holo at in the middle of the room showing the schematics for the building and a highlighting the elevator down to the bunker. All in the room including Dare looked at the holo. She took her hand away from her wrist tool and knowing full well she hadn't hacked in yet and said. "Opensaysme." Under her breathe. Testing her instincts that it was an AI of some kind likely a superintendant designed to evacuate people in case of an invasion. She was honestly hoping for this to happen to save her the time from having to hack the system. The AI knew what she meant and started the process.

A hole opened in the floor then a shiny box rose up out of the hole. It stopped and opened the door showing the inside of the luxury elevator. Red carpet, shining metal handrails and walls, topped with inviting music. The team clustered in with the unconcious Macer, just inside the door.

With all their armor on the elevator was tight. The ride down was blessedly quick. At the bottom the team exited into a narrow hall the same width as the elevator. It descended in a slope for a few dozen yards ending into a door like a bank vault. Dare knocked two quick taps on the door, it opened with a few deep clicks almost like a thud.

Inside was a grand hotel packed with all the bells and whistles packed in a space the size of a cargo ships storage bay. The space was two stories down and twice that wide. Dare told the ODST's carring Macer to set her down on the huge circular couch in the center of the room. Tarkov and Spider set to searching for a med station and found a large supply of Opti-can's, Bio-foam, and other first aid supplies. Shepley scanned her to check for any brain swelling or other intrenal injuries.

Rookie was checking for any arms while the ODST's from the second team relaxed on the plush couch staining it thoroughly.

Once the AI knew they were all in the bunker he locked the door and set the main screen to the glassing intructional survival video. It felt a summoning from far away and returned to the Shipmistresses side. Chu'R Tes was screeching at the Covenant still in the bridge telling them, "to find the case!" Also commanding the AI to bring up the local cameras and to analyse a possible escape route for the humans that hit the exchange. Damn, he had to delay her.

The Huragok had done their work well indeed, the AI had to obey this Shipmistress in any request unless a member of the UNSC had its data chip in their possession that was as close as they could get to complete obedience from the AI's security systems for now. Luckly that also meant it could still work on helping the Humans still, working both sides. Once they fininshed their work the AI would be fully functional and under Covenant control. It is a good thing Chu'R Tes thought in terms of the flesh. She thought it took time as well as punishment to break the AI, so the Engineers would stop the reprogramming to give the AI time to "reconsider" or "convert".

The Engineers, or Hugagok to the Covenant, being the passive tools they are would't question why they only reprogramed a little at a time they could just go to work on converting the Human and Covenant hybrid weapons the Kig-Yar distribute. Chu'R Tes an obsession about human tech. Just like all the other Covenant they thought the humans as low tech but the Chu'R Tes couldn't escape how effective the human weapons were. Yes, they were loud and need all kinds of maintenance and ammo, but wow did they pack a punch. Also the weapons, both Human and Covenant, caught a great price with the humans that hated the other humans.

The AI did as commanded in even though it knew exactly were the asset was he still went through all the steps he went through before. Also checking the engines to make sure the ship remained in stationary orbit along with the others. He also calculates the posistions of all the Covenant ships, then counting personnel. He checked over its own condition running a self-diagnostic. In other words for an AI it took its time which in the relative time of the shipmistress it was about 3 minutes.

Then he brought up a hologram of the office building, zooming in on the meeting room then the elevator shaft and the saferoom at the bottom. The AI then told the Shipmistress that there was a 97.6% chance that this is where the ODST team went that had the asset. The Shipmistress called out orders to its commanders and called for the AI to calculate where the humans would run if they were to get out. He told her in his overlapping broken speech, "I need more information on the schematics for the colony, its structures and the sub system of infrastructure. I don't need anything from you! More in-put, need more in-put." The Kig'yar eyed the AI and called to a Jackal at a control panel. The Jackal pulled a data disc from a cubby and hooked it up to the main system. The AI then downloaded the scans for the colony that the forward scouting groups had collected prior to the ships arriving.

Chu'R Tes had been very careful about what information was going into the care of the AI she was trying to convert. She kept and new information offline until it needed to use the AI with it. The AI finished his processing and found two likely places the ODST's would take to get off the planet and found one very likely due to the distance to the elevator and placement of the Covenant forces. The second was blocked by where the Covenant forces where thickest right now and was further away.

So the AI gave the calculations to the Shipmistress as it was right now. That they would use tunnels to reach the surface and travel through the streets to the space elevator/evac zone. The AI did this without delay knowing full well it wasn't going to let the humans take that route. Chu'R Tes called out more commands and turned to watch the holo of the colony and her forces. She had to keep them from the evac zone, the AA guns where too dangerous for her ships. She watched as many of her forces moved from their previous location to reform a guantlet for the humans to try to escape through.

The AI dove back into the schematics of the sand removal tunnels and the office building and found solution to his problem of keeping some distance for the humans from the covies. The AI then went back into the safe room cameras, screens and the HUD visors of the ODST team. Dare was hooking up a tablet to the asset from the briefcase the AI found the tablet to have no wifi and couldn't download any information from it. So it watched from Dare's helmet. As she was waiting for the system to intergrate

Macer woke up from her sedation holding her head and said, "oooooowww." She looked around with a daze then seemed to focus on the Rookie. As quickly as she could she stood and pulled her pistol, pointing it at the Rookie, "You shot me!" she accused.

Dare rose and placed her hand on Macers gun lowering it and told her in her best listen to me or you'll regret it tone. "It was an Jackal, cloaked, that he shot at. It was about to jump us. He," pointing at the Rookie, "got a warning shot in and it knocked you through the floor you've been out for a while." Lowering his SMG he had in firing position as Macer drew on him, he put a hand up taking a step back.

Macer sat back down and waved an apology to the Rookie. She leaned back with a sigh and put a hand back to her head. Rookie turned and continued his search. Tarkov tapped a bottle of painkillers on her shoulder saying, "Take these." Then nodded to a bottle of water they had set out for her.

The AI stopped the videos and started playing a mining safety video, blinking a light near a wall in the corner by some of the arms the Rookie had organized for easy distribution including a local militia helmat for Macer. No one noticed right away they were too interested in what Dare was doing with the implant. She had set up a tablet and started searching through the files. She settled on a video archive and hit play.

Chapter 7

The fate of Del Rio

The video showed the view from the person's point of view. There were a hand full of people on what looked like a bridge of a ship. Dare and Macer recognized the design as a VIP personnel carrier for the UNSC. The crew seemed to be trying to work out how to get the ships systems back online, they seemed to have suffered a malfunction and were stranded. it had apparently been a while and everyone was in thick clothing and frost was on much of the bridge. The persons view walked over to a control panel that had started blinking on and off with a tech working on it. "Ensign Ward, you seem to be accomplishing something for us finally."

The Ensign stood saluting the Captain so crisp only a new officer could pull it off. "Sir, uh, yes Captain Del Rio, Sir." He said.

Del Rio waved his hand to the panel and said, "Show me what you have, Ensign." Ensign Ward shuffled over to the panel blowing on his hand before touching the panel.

"We had to pull the main batteries from the life boats to get enough power to try and jumpstart the engines. We'll need to run the engine diagnostics to pinpoint what happened to..."

Del Rio cut him off, "Ensign Ward I'm not interested in what caused the ship to lose power because if it were an enemy attack they would have finished us days ago." He seemed to stand even taller and look down his bulbous nose even further, "Just tell me is this going to work?"

"Sir I,I need to run a core diagnostic and hull intergity..." Ensign Ward started.

"How long to run these calculations, Ensign?" interrupted Captain Del Rio again.

"Sir, I,uh..."Ensign Ward began again.

"Sir, the required core intergrity system calibration will take approximately 36 hours without the AI's help, Sir." Input another bridgeman working on a nearby system.

Del Rio shook his head and just then a beeping started on the panel and Ensign Ward sounded excited saying, "We have an incomming ship frigate class. They must have intercepted our beacon. Their here to rescue us!"

Del Rio looked to the panel and then turned to the drew members on the deck. "This is a colony ship not a UNSC frigate. We're near a known insurgent colony space." He pointed out the main view port and said, "until they show their intentions with this ship we must assume they are scavengers and are hostile." He turned back to the crew, "I want all crew on deck and suited up to defend against a boarding party." The crew looked at him then jumped into motion when he shouted, "NOW!"

Del Rio turned back to the panel as the bridgemen ran to a small armory with their magnetic boots clinking on the deck. The small crew made reading noises, gearing up. Del Rio stayed at the panel and watched as the frigate sent three smaller vessels forward and latched to the outer hull of his ship. Within a few seconds the sounds of cutting started against the outer hull. Del Rio looked to the display and started the jumpstart sequence. The ship started to spark and pop relays as the ship attempted to power up. Ensign Ward shouted from the doorway "Captain?"

Del Rio shouted, "Not now Ensign. We need power now! We're being boarded." The ship shuddered as the engines tried to fire through their start up. He saw the power flickering in the main bridge computer with the AI and he called to it, "Leonardo start the engines and begin evasive actions. We are being boarded!" Leonardo, the AI, flicked its holo image a few times before winking out along with the rest of the ship.

The only lights coming from the main view port and the sparks from the cutting torches. Then a moment of darkness and silence. Suddenly the ship was filled with flashlights and gunfire from both the hall and the breaches. The Captains hands can be seen pulling a manual level on the AI's pedistal during the flashes from the hall. A small sound of glass cracking and electronics sizzling is heard. After a few moments of gunfire the flashlights shine into the bridge and Del Rio's hand is shadowing the lights from his eyes as he says, " The slipspace drive isn't functional and the AI has been destroyed. There is nothing for you here, I surrender." A muzzle flashes and the screen freezes.

Chapter 8

One Way Out

Dare looks through the rest of the data and pulls Macer in for a consult while the rest of the ODST's mummer among themselves. The group is solomn after watching a man's death through his own eyes. After several minutes Spider noticed, and spoke up about the flashing lights and the video about mining. All the other screens started to flicker and show different things like evacuation zones, and mining explosion signs along with all the lights blinking on and off making it appear like the lights were traveling in a single direction to the back corner.

A hologram with a schematic of the building they were in and the tunnel for the sand system were shown. Then red blips started to form on the top floor where they had entered the elevator and more appeared down the shaft and moving down. Dare looked up from the tablet and while packing it away took look at the holo on the table. She took in all the videos and lights. "A Superintendant is helping us. Blow that wall out."

Tarkov looked to Spider who nodded and went to the table with the explosives the Rookie set out. He grabbed them and went to the back corner the holo had indicated. "We've only got enough for one try," said Spider. The lightshow stopped and settled back to normal save for all the screens still flashed with green signs.

Spider and Tarkov muttered at the back corner while setting the bomb. Shepley called for the rest of the ODST team to gear up and move to the far wall. Macer grabbed the new helmet following Dare to the far side of the room and hunkered down. The ODST team crouched near them as Tarkov and Spider braced themselves behind a nearby pillar. The Rookie stood behind another. Spider counted down three, two, one. The wall blew with a great force blowing dust everywhere. The force blew in on them powerfully then strangely it sucked out into the tunnel with nearly as much force as the sand sensors kicked the system on to drain the dust out into the tunnel. Once the wind calmed down the team hit the tunnel. Dare brought up a map of the tunnel system and lit up a waypoint on a seemingly unused section of the tunnels.

The ODST team started to ask why there when the evac zone was in the other direction. When Tarkov added in, "That's the ONI base I take it?"

Dare nodded to Tarkov and said, "It's a manufacturing and testing facility but yes, we are still going there."

The Spider comments, "There's always a secret ONI base."

 **Chapter 9**

Under the Mountain

A couple dozen meters into the tunnel they started traveling the first of the caves. The path they were on turned into a catwalk overlooking a large deep pit. The pit was not pitch black though it had a small amount of light that was quite bright. The caves opened up under the plateau with many new cracks formed from the guardian. It was a little strange having light shine from under rather than overhead. The light didn't fill all the caves or even much in the area the ODST team was.

Rookie led the team along the catwalk around the first few bends. Once he reached an intersection with a scafford on the opposite wall he had to duck from a green blast of a carbine fired in his direction. Off to the right he spotted the first of several Jackals in sniper positions. He took out the BR, he had taken from the bunker armory, scoping in on the sniper. He took his shot before the Jackal could better position itself to shoot the crouching ODST.

The burst of rounds hit the Jackal in the right shoulder on its armor knocking the Jackal back a step straightened from its crouching postion. Rookie quickly took aim at the stunned Jackal shooting it in the head dropping it into the pit below. The rest of the team took up firing postitions around the Rookie. He waved the team to proceed while he covered.

Tarkov went first with an ODST from Echo-9 following. Tarkov raised his DMR a few meters from where the Rookie crouched taking the next Jackal in line. The ODST following him had to duck behind the railing to avoid the shots from a human sniper rifle that echoed in the tunnels.

Dare crouched between Tarkov and the pinned tooper she took three quick shots with her silenced magnum taking out the sniper. The ODST's continue along the tunnel catwalk that crossed the expansive gap. They crossed and back-tracked to the dead Jackals. An ODST from Echo-9 picked up the sniper rifle with a handful of extra rounds they also found a couple plasma grenades to go with them. Spider and the Rookie pocketed one each.

They left the rest moving on in the direction of the ONI base. Dare figured these Jackals were part of a scouting party before the invasion. The tunnels where easy to navigate with their Visor modes. Along with the AI lighting pathways with helpful signs keeping them on a fairly straight path through the winding tunnels. At least twice they had to take cover and hold on while the sand system cleared out a few tons of sand when a blockage gave out.

The team also found several more Jackal ambushers laying in wait. They were eliminated quickly now that the two teams had shared combat everyone had found their niche'. Rookie and Spider more often than not took the lead followed by one ODST from Echo-9. Tarkov, Dare and Macer stayed in the middle with Shepley and the other ODST's taking up the rear. Their evac plan seemed to be going quite well until a caution symbol appeared on all their huds.

Chapter 10

Less than Scum

The AI was able to intercept the first few transmissions from the Jackal teams the ODST's were near. The messages were short grunts or sounds of gun fire ending in thuds and clangs of bodies and weapons hitting the floor. The AI's mandate from Chu'R Tes was to monitor incoming messages about the assets location from the scouts. Since none of the gunshots or other sounds of battle didn't carry with it a direct spoken message about the ODST's whereabouts, the AI found his loophole until one finally formed words.

A Jackal sniper using camo spotted the group in the tunnels and followed them rather than engaging. It sent a message giving an estimate of Covenant killed by the humans and what direction they were traveling. The Shipmistress backhanded the hologram of the AI and slammed her clawed hand down on the imaging device letting out a loud screeching hiss. The AI fuzzed with the backhand and distorted when the claws jostled the imager, but he stood in its same posture unflinching in the face of his captor.

Turning from Chu'R Tes, the AI obediently adjusted the hologram of the colony to show the last seen position of the asset. It also showed the possible route and destination the humans were heading. The Shipmistress called up all the entrances to the tunnels and map showed a large amount still functioning in the area the ODST's were about to enter. Over the area was a vacant residential area. Chu'R Tes called for a com link to another Shipmistress in the pirate fleet. The AI shuttered once his Shipmistress gave the command to Shipmistress Chu'R Gor to unleash her horde. Chu'R Gor's shrill and following glee were holoprojected along with the spittle flying from her beak. Chu'R Tes waved a lazy hand at the vile Jackal Shipmistress dismissing the link, even among the pirates, this ship and its crew were considered scum. The transmission ended while the creature still heckled.

Chu'R Tes then leaned in over the hologram watching the new attack begin. The holo of the bloated and unmaintained ship of Chu'R Gor moved above a drop zone, launching its gravlift pad and locked in overhead. No sooner than the ships lift activated than the horde of Grunts began their descent. So many poured down the lift that a few were pushed from the gravlift beam and plummeted to their death. One even fell onto a street camera the AI was watching through.

The AI had to warn the ODSTs about the oncoming assault.

 **Chapter 11**

Gruntpocalypse!

Caution signage started to appear on any avaiable screen. Dare caught on and called for the team to double time their pace. The team were rounding a bend in a man-made section when the first Grunt fell down a shaft and hit the catwalk near them, before it got to its feet the ODST's peppered it with rounds. Another fell on top of the of the body of the first. A third landed faster than the second, knocking both to the ground. A fourth and fifth added to the pile of grunting Grunts. More started falling and piling in at other surface enterances just as quickly. Dare shouted "Run!" Spider was shooting the closest pile and hooting with excitement. Tarkov seeing Grunts pile in from dozens of surface vents started pressing the group to get them to move faster. Sprinting just behind Dare, Macer, and Shepley, Tarkov hollers "Get moving, it's a Gruntpacolypse!"

More and more Grunts piled in, tumbling down into piles and running at the ODST's shooting a variaty of plasma weapons. In moments the number of Grunts went from dozens to hundreds. All the ODST's ran on, only stopping to open a hole in the massive horde with their coordinated gunfire. The Veteran Sergeant called out the masses to clear while Dare kept them moving in the direction of the base as best she could. Even with the AI lighting the trail with city's warning signs the amount of Grunts in the tunnels was sometimes just as impassable as a steel barricade.

Tunnel after tunnel, turn after turn the Grunts were always there. Varying in groups of five to ten and more often than not, the team ran into groups as large as twenty, with more just around another corner. There was no time to stop and replenish the ammo they burned through, it was move forward or get surrounded and killed. The group found a small respite, where a few shafts were blocked by the overload of sand clogging the vents to the streets. The Grunts couldn't descend to this level from above.

The team came to an alcove and caught their breath. Spider not laughing anymore looked to Tarkov and asked through a few gasps, "Wha...wa..the?" Tarkov kneeled near the enterance to their temporay safe spot breathing heavily.

After a few heavy breaths himself the Rookie answered " Gruntpocalype." He said breathlessly.

" Seen one on Algolis." Tarkov looked over his shoulder at Spider and said, "Wiped out the capitol city in hours. Hundreds of thousands destroyed it. Eighty-five hundred people killed in hours..."

Shepley tended to the more severe plasma burns on the group. Dare had her ONI tool out checking the path to the base. "We are nearly there. Just a few more tunnels then we should find the hangar bay, it connects to these tunnels." Rookie stood first followed by Dare, Macer and one of the ODSTs. The rest needed another minute to recover. Rookie almost gave them that until the first Grunt appeared and he headshot it with his suppressed magnum. He waved them foreward, they all got the message and followed. Two more shots sound from the suppressed magnum before they cleared the alcove. The Rookie and Tarkov took the lead and called out the target groups or just tossed a grenade to clear a large group without slowing the team.

This time they didn't stop as a group to clear out the Grunts. Their run was more chaotic, shots fired everywhere. More than one trooper had no choice but to drop their empty gun then pick up a plasma pistol of rifle then catch up. Spider was able to catch one Grunt by the shoulder, it had turned and started fleeing after its brothers fell to the humans. Spider had no ammo left, so he took his combat knife to the Grunts neck. He patted the Grunts head saying, "good boy," even as he took its pink crystal spike shooting, Needler.

The tunnels soon changed having no more entrance shafts from above, also the tunnel sloped more downward. The team entered an area with less natural tunnels to a more man-made section. They could see a large wall with a reinforced door at the opposite end of the opening. There were supply stations and digging equipment in the area in front of the door. Luckily there were no grunts to be seen.

 **Chapter 12**

Firefight

Dare called to Macer, "Get that door open!" Macer checked over the door and found that it wasn't even powered. She told Dare they would need to connect a generator to even start to open it.

Tarkov palmed Spiders shoulder and nodded in ONI Operatives direction. "Go, help." He commanded the ODST.

Spider approached Macer and started asking techy questions like, "How much juice do you need?" After a few moments of conversation that surely made Macer blush. Spider called an ODST over to help gather cables and tools.

Dare kept her ONI tool out saying to the group, "We're close enough I have a link to the Hangar bay, I can start up the Longsword remotely. Those Grunts are heading this way, you have to keep them back until we're in." One of the ODST's of Echo-9 was the lucky enough to find a weapons cache before the first rumbling of the Gruntpacolyse were heard.

He shouted to the others and they quickly restocked with Assualt Rifle and Battle Rifle ammo. The Grunts didn't spill in like they had in the tunnels, instead they gathered then came on in large waves. Every entrance was feeding Grunts into this central cavern even with the small entrances and few boulders in the main room the Grunts nearly filled it in seconds.

The ODST and ONI team started their defense with a volley of grenades, opening large pockets where the Grunts had been. They kept in tight groups burst firing into those pockets aiming for any ememies staggering form the explosion making each grenade and spent round have the most impact.

Just as the first room full of Grunts diminished to a few, the next wave came like the first. Their grenades spent and green plasma bolts, pink streaking needles and a fair amount of lead flying around, the team could only keep the front lines at bay. The troopers took every advantage when the Grunts would grow scared or foolhardy pulling out grenades of their own. The ODST's quickly head shot any Grunt with the signature blue glow, of the Covenant grenades in their hands before they could throw them at their Squad. The expolosives would fall with their bodies then explode in the faces of the masses of Grunt brothers. This caused the same effect as their own grenades. The team pounded those weakend enemies the same as they had before. However, the second and third waves took a little longer then the first. Jackals and a couple Brutes joined the masses of Grunts with each wave. Ammo was getting scarce but they held their own with only a few glancing blows and plasma burns.

Spider called over the comms, "The power supply is almost ready." The team had to leave their cover to scramble to the fallen front lines and pick up the weapons the Grunts dropped. Some were plasma weapons with human tech sights and power level indicators, others were human weapons converted with alien tech, ammo readouts and holographic sights.

The fourth wave wasn't as crowded filling the room and the team soon found out why. Through the largest entrance two Hunters entered, one blue armed with a fuel rod cannon, the other gold colored with a giant needler cannon attached to it's arm. The Falcon pilot from Echo-9 was the closest to the Hunters and they quickly surronded his postion. He unloaded his AR at the blue one even as the gold one flanked him and shield bashed the pilot over the barrier of the next closest ODST. The pilots AR kept firing until he landed in a broken heap.

Rookie and Tarkov, seeing an opening were able to get behind the blue one while it's attention was on their fellow squad mates. Tarkov tossed a plasma grenade at the large shield plate on its back and Rookie burst fired a half clip of AR rounds into it's spine after the explosion took off the plate and staggered the Hunter. The blue Hunter was able to recover quickly to spin its shield arm in the path of the stinging assault. The gold Hunter stepped behind the blue guarding its bond mates exposed spine. The Hunters now back to back, faced off with the ODSTs. The Hunter's fired their weapons to force the humans to take cover so they could move into a more defensive position. They pivoted and backed away from Rookie and Tarkov's postition.

The Hunters backs now facing rest of the Covenant forces. They retreated, grouping up with what was left of this wave of Grunts and Jackals. When one Hunter entered the front line of the Grunts they both turned and faced the ODST team. Rookie and Tarkov had to circle their barrier to stay guarded from the Hunters heavy weapons. The ODST duo sprinted back to Shepley's position for better cover. Closing the distance to the rest of the team. Each Hunter split with a group of Grunts following them.

Spider finished the power supply. Saying "Vamanos, Chico's! The Genny is running on fumes!" He went to join the rest of Whiskey-6 off to the side with the vulnerable Hunter. Most of the Covenant had flocked behind the large Hunter for its protection as much as theirs. That left the middle area unguarded.

Tarkov ordered him, "Continue to flank the Covies, get behind that Hunter!" Spider kept going, sprinting from cover to cover into a flanking position near the back of the grunts. He saw that his squad kept suppresive fire on the group to keep them engaged.

Spider crouch-walked a few strides out from his cover to approach the nearest Grunt from behind, when he was in range he quickly placed his suppressed pistol on the back of the Grunts scaled skull by reaching around the methane tank. He squeezed the trigger instantly killing the Grunt, its body hit the ground with a thud.

The next two Grunts in line turned moving their bulky methane breath-tanks out of the Spider's firing position clearing the two shots too their faces. They dropped with the same thud to the rock floor. Spider saw more Grunts and the Hunter around the other side of a large rock pile. He quickly scavengered the Grunts bodies and came up with a couple of plasma grenades. Climbing up the opposite side of the large rockpile from the covies, he readies the grenades.

Once at the top he tossed two of the blue grenades into the groups exposed back. Then turning, he jumped off the back of the rockpile as the blue explosion burst behind him. The plasma showered blue mist and Covenant corpses all around. Spider hit the ground rolling with the impact. He stood, sprinting around the rockpile, ready to clean up any reamining Grunts and Jackals or to finish off the Hunter.

Spider saw that all the enemies where down, Rookie had went over to the dead Hunter and was prying its fuel rod gun out of the still wriggling pile of worms. Tarkov came out of his cover after Spider had rounded the corner. He burst a few rounds into the back of a Brute trying to pick itself up from the blast laying it back down. Tarkov saluted Spider then urged his squad to follow over to the other Covenant and ODST's position.

Tarkov and Spider were faster and more mobile than Rookie carrying the fallen Hunters fuel rod cannon. He had tested the firing on a pile of Grunts before following finding that it didn't fire the same as when the Hunters, many worm fingers, fired it. For him it poured green plasma in a short arc, similiar to the UNSC flamethrowers, to cover the ground with the Grunt bodies in burning plasma.

The Rookie could picture the bodies on the ground cooling, turning to black glass like mounds, as the covies ships did, but on a much smaller scale. He followed Whiskey-6 as fast as he could. Once he arrived he saw that the other ODSTs from Echo-9 where dead and his team were the only thing stopping the now enraged golden armored Hunter from getting to Macer and Dare. The Hunter roared standing to its full height, running after them, flinging its arms wide trying to swat the humans with its massive sheild.

Rookie came into view of the massive Hunter with arms held high ready to smash him. He hefted the "Glasser" at the Hunter and poured hot green plasma all about its chest and legs. Oh, how it roared louder and fell away from the ODST.

The door to the hangar opened then, Dare shouting to the reamining team even as the next wave of Grunts flooded the firefight. All troopers turned and bolted for the door to get out of this massacre. Rookie was the last one through, pouring plasma all about the doorway of their escape route to give them time to get away. Once the Glasser was depleted he dropped it and ran behind the team down into the hangar.

Chapter 13

Repair, man.

Grunts screech and burn while piling in through the melting enterway, thanks to Rookie's new toy. The team made a run to the waiting ship. It was already prepped, thanks to Dare's work with her ONI tool. They take off in the ship while being fired upon by the continuing Gruntpacolypse. The Longsword blasts straight forward out a launch tunnel. It rises out near the crater, the ship blasts towards the sky. Macer in the cockpit sees the space elevator and the crater.

Meanwhile the AI following the events closely backs out of the teams visors to turn its focus to more of its own safeguards and damaged core. Its attempts to fix itself, fighting through error messge after error message. Until it starts bypassing several blocks and building on its success. The AI smiles to itself even as it launches itself at the human vessel. The human ship just reached orbit and is readying for a slipspace jump.

The AI dives through their ships systems finding Dare had plugged the implant they recovered into the main computer to download the astro-navagation information. It intercepts all the data and left a fragment as it erased the implant after it was done. It went back to the Covenant ship and stood next to the Shipmistress mimicing its usual jittering and humbled state. It knew its time was short now that it had nearly all of its algorithms and systems restored by. The next time the engineers came to fix the emprisoned AI, they would know everything it did and the covenant would have a fully capable UNSC AI. Chu'R Tes would know everything the humans had ever done and where they all where. The pirates could ravage every colony left to mankind along with train and use their own tactics and technology against them.

Chapter 14

The Cole Protocol

Macer was the first to notice something wasn't right with the ships systems. She called to Dare, who was at the navagation/co-pilot station. Dare checked the transfer data and pounded her fist on the armrest when she found all the data gone. An AI hologram appeared over the screen suddenly. It was green and took the shape of a man wearing a hoodie with large headphones around his neck and pants that had a galaxy pattern on them. He seemed to have also been torn and he had scars on his face and hands. The AI held up a hand in a casaual hello greeting except for the jitterin its hologram. "Captain Dare." He greeted her like an old friend. "I am UNSC AI, SRS 2413-8 designate: Sirius."

She gritted he teeth and said, "What do you want?" Knowing full well this AI had taken the data and stranded them in this system.

"I need you and your team to finish my mission." Said the little green man. "I have been watching you since the Kig-yar fleet arrived here, I sought you out to help me. I took your nav data to manipulate you into helping me. I know your mandates. The Cole Protocol is in effect. You're stuck here and I am the only way you can leave the system, before any UNSC help can arrive. I need you to retrieve me or destroy me."

Dare looked at the AI hard and asked, "Where are you?"

Sirius said plainly just like if one where to mention a room in their home, "the command vessel." Then the AI shrunk down back into the console. Leaving a map of them and the command vessel.

Dare slumped in the seat and the ODSTs started mummering after listening to the conversation.

"Bullshit!" Spider declared. That broke the silence and caught everyone's attention. "We lost almost all of the team. We barely made it out!" Tarkov slammed a fist on Spiders chest and gritted a threat.

Dare was the first to speak though. "That's not enough! That AI is on the enemy vessel and it has all our nav data to all our colonies. Not just the civilian colonies but our military installations. So once those bastards figure out what they have, they will rain all hell down on everyone. They could do it with our own weapons.!"

The Veteran Sergeant put in a question, "The Cole Protocol?"

Dare calmed visibly, "The Cole Protocol," she started. "Is a contingency that any data on humanities colony worlds be retrieved or destroyed including our AIs. This was the main mission of the Spartan-II program during the Covenant War. Their victories weren't heroic assualts to save suffering colonists, they were suicide missions to protect our secrets. ONI and the UNSC needed time to win the war. Keeping our nav data and our AI's computing out of their hands barely got us by. Until Earth was found by the Covenant. Then all resources went to Earth's defense. The Protocol was put on the back burner until recently."

"Why now?" Shepley asked, "Why institute the Cole Protocol again and waste our lives when they know where Earth and all of our colonies are?" Dare didn't answer and they knew she wouldn't, they looked to Macer, Dare's protoge', she didn't answer either.

Tarkov broke the silence before Dare could give the order to deploy. "A new Earth." He stated it as much as asked it. "A new Earth, a new secret colony the Covies don't know about, neither do we."

Dare stared at the clever veteran Sergeant before responding. She relented however and said, "Its more than that. Its another chance for humanity."

"Since the Covenant found Earth, the UNSC no longer needed to randomize slipspace retreats to hide her" Dare looked around the room. "Instead command brought the majority of the naval resources back to Earth in defense." She paused, "Command felt that secercy was enough to hide our remaining colonies from the Covenant, because we knew that Earth was their prize."

Dare brought up her ONI tool and projected a star map with Earths colonies she outlined many in red, and a few in blue. "The red are our colonies that have been attacked from Harvest to Earth. The blue are our colonies that we have confirmed that Covenant presence has been found since 2552 to now. These few greens are still hidden as far as we know." She extended the star map and a large purple area lit up. "These are confirmed Covenant worlds identifying as current or former Covenants." She expanded the purple zone more than doubleing it and dwarfing the human colonies. "This," she said, "is the estimated colonies of all non-human worlds." She closed the star map and looked over the group. "The only reason I'm going to tell you about what is on this implant is because non of us might survive what we need to do next." She points to the UNSC chips hologram and said, "We have to retrieve or destroy the asset it has just processed humanitites last best hope. If ONI and the UNSC can't deter or destroy what remains of the Covenant presence."

Dare continued, "The Covenant has shattered, yes, but a new threat and more unpredictable enemies have taken their place. Warlords. Just like these pirates that are on Dhoro now. They don't have the organization of the Prophet organized Covenant. However every warlord that arises using claimed Covenant ships still has the ability to glass any of our worlds. We have been hit so hard we can't even defend out remaining colonies. We need time to rebuild and the Infinity is the direction we need to go." She paused again before begining again.

Macer took the opportunity to take the conversation where it needed to go to win over the ODSTs. "The Infinity isn't just a prototype ship with an army of Spartans. Its also a decoy. Its offical mission is to explore and reclaim humanities colonies, its unoffical mission is to draw attention. Why else publicize where the Spartan progam is kept. It's not for transparency. It's to paint a target for these new threats."

Shepley spoke the question on everyone's mind, "Why?"

Dare glared at Macer then answered, "So we can find this new Earth. A world or worlds that is a hidden stronghold for the purpose of healing and holding safe humanity's future if these threats cannot be overcome." She let that sink in a few moments then continued, "The reason I'm telling you this is because of the Cole Protocol and this implant has data on one such world. We don't need a ship like the Infinity and a battalion of Spartans to survive. We'll need a Fleet of Infinty's and a race of Spatans."

All the troops began nodding in agreement. Tarkov simple looked at his troops then turned to Dare, "How?" Is the only question the stoic Sergeant asked to answer their commitment to this. Dare layed out the plan.

"Most of their fighters are committed to raiding the colony. Our approach will be from upper orbit down to them. We are likely to find some resistance as we descend. If it gets too heavy we'll need to deploy in these prototype ODST drop pods to land on the vessel to increase our chances of entering the ship. The more of us that make it the better for asset retreivel." Dare pointed at the hologram indicating the tactics while briefing the team on their suicide mission.

Spider had to kick in a jibe, "You expect us to drop onto a Covenant destroyer?"

Dare responded, "I only miss on purpose, trust me."

Tarkov spoke next, "Whats the extraction plan?"

Dare gave them three options, "that, we'll assess as the situation presents itself. Our primary is to get to the escape pods near the engine room, second we'll comondiere a transport. They are using a lot of UNSC ships so we might get lucky there. Third and least likely we make a run for the grav-lift, and finally if we can't get off the ship we blow it to hell, or destroy the AI, get captured and tortured to death. Any questions?" No one said a word they all just started nodding their head one at a time.

Tarkov quickly issued resupply orders and they all finished by strapping into the drop pods except for Macer and Dare in the pilot seats. Dare was on the comms trying to reach any forces on the ground to put pressure on the grav-lift below to focus the covie forces and draw them away.

Chapter 15

Helljumpers

The ODSTs loaded into the prototype pods, the human engineers created these new boarding craft based off reverse-engineered Covenant boarding ships. Except these were single passenger and basically an ODST drop pod with the ability to drill into a ships hull. This would be their first live fire field test, not that the ODST's know that.

Macer started their descent to the battlecruiser. It didn't take the covies long to realize that a UNSC Longsword was on an intercept course. It began to deploy counter measures. It started with a couple Banshees.

Which the ship handled in short order. The next waves of craft ranged from more banshees, to a couple Seraphs and even a few USNC Pelicans. The larger Longsword held together very well with its thicker hull. Heavier guns and the sheilding tech didn't hurt. Even though the sheild had to cycle several times leaving the hull vulnerable, after some heavy impacts from other vessels.

With Macers piloting skills, they gained on the battlecruisers quickly. Unfortunately that also gained them a lot more attention from the Covenant fleet. Several converged on them to cut them off from the battlecruiser. A small fleet of vessels poured out from its main bay filling the space around the Longsword. Putting them on the defense. Macer called to Dare to get to a pod. She didn't wait for the ONI Captain to get to the pod before she started the evasive manuver's.

Dare lurched back and forth taking slow steps with her mag boots, the only thing keeping her from tumbling around the interior of the ship. Just as she made it to her pod, Dare jumped in closing the hatch. Macer engaged the auto-pilot then lunged for her pod as an explosion blasted though the cockpit.

All of the pods started to deploy Dare and the ODST's could see that Macer had broke though the bariccade and the ships were chasing the Longsword as they started their drop to the battlecruiser. The Longsword flew off and was torn apart by the covie fleet. The pods descended at an intense pace. A humming could be heard over the com, Spider always hummed a tone during a drop.

The Covenant battlecruiser, they dropped towards, was so massive it filled their pods viewport. Blocking the view of the planet for a few seconds before impacting the vessel. After impact Dare called for a head count. Everyone one of the ODST's sounded off. A few seconds later a loud thud is heard, then Macer calls out, "Macer, OK."

The pods took what seemed like an eternity to bore throught the ships hull though it was really only half a minute. To the seasoned ODST's who pop out of their pod a moment after its hits, then face heavy fire from enemies. This was almost worse waiting to see if a passing banshee would fire on your pod.

Dare took a reading of their impact point and said, "We hit close to the engine room, congratulations Macer good work. When we get in there they could have us pinched right away so take cover and focus your fire, clearing a path. I've marked a waypoint on your hud's. go!" All the pods breached and deployed the troops. The breaching pods had created a hard seal on the hull so there was still atmosphere in the ship.

Chapter 16

Once Upon a Time, Aboard a Covenant Ship

Rookie hit the deck first taking a knee, crouching behind a bulbous tank with several sacks and what looked like baby bottle nipples hanging from them. The Grunts crowded a sealed bulkhead down the corridor. They had tried fleeing when pods breached the hull fearing they were going to be sucked into space. The Grunts seeing humans falling out of the holes in the hull had forgotten their fear and drew there weapons, charging the troops. Shouting, "Come nipple brothers the humans are stealing our sustenance!"

The others pilled out under incoming plasma fire. They had very little cover in the corridor knowing they had to get out, into a better position. Dare and Macer moved along the backside from the firefight finding a control panel for the sealed door there. Before Macer could begin to hack the door, a voice in the troopers helmets greeted them. "Welcome aboard," Sirius the AI said, "here is a passkey for you, I have to prepare the ship for my departure once you retreive me. This will open any undamaged door for you on your path to the engine room. Good luck." It disappeared then a hologram appeared on the wall panel, Dare swiped her ONI tool over the hologram absorbing the data. She then swiped her tool over the door panel and the door swooshed open. Dare called for the troopers to hurry but they had just finished off the Grunts stuck at the other end of the corridor. Dare copied the ONI tool key to Macer's telling her to take point with the Rookie.

Rookie and Macer lead the team through the winding corridors of the covie ship. After several sections with a few engagements. The small green holographic man appeared over a holo-lock, it waves a hand motioning to a door saying, "I have a gift for you, Captain, but you'll need to earn it." He bowed then faded out. Macer opened the double doors with her ONI tool/Covenant key. The brig. In the center of the room the team caught the attention of a couple of brute guards. Armed with red plasma rifles the brutes assualted the team from a raised dias.

The Brutes grew furious as their plasma rifles couldn't out range the humans battle rifles and pistols. The Brutes took a lot of damage as they stood their ground. One broke into a frenzy and started charging the Rookie who was the closest, he had approached along the cell doors. The other Brute followed suit throwing its rifle aside, charging wanting to kill with its claws around these humans throats. The first brute was shot drown halfway to the Rookie. The second was able to take a lunging attack at the Rookie, he dodged at the last second by diving to the floor out to the side away from the wall. Macer pulled the trigger on her BR headshoting the large Brute as it stood for a second after crashing into the wall where the Rookie had been.

The people in the cells crowded the front careful not to touch the force fields. They could be heard shouting for help, pointing to the dias the Brutes had defended. Dare swept her ONI tool over the dias deactivating the fields holding the prisoners. The people in the cells praised the troopers for saving them. Two of the cells turned up a few marines. They picked up the red brute rifles first, then saluting the ODSTs.

Dare approached these freed troops, "Were you from Dhoro?"

One of the marines answered, "No we were captured weeks ago aboard a Frigate heading to Earth."

Another man, a civilian, interrupts shouting. "These covies are slavers! We gotta get out of here!"

Dare hushs the man, locking gazes with all of them, "Our plan is to get to the engine room then to the hangar bay." She was glad for the reinforcements but disliked having the civilians more than doubling their number. She was surprised a little when a lot of them started grabbing gear in the hall from other fallen covies the ODSTs had cut down on their way here. These colonists were pioneers that could handle the rough life in the outer colonies.

Rookie and Macer along with one of the marines took up the point position on their push back to engineering. The marine introduced himself as Brant and said he could lead the way to the engine room. He had been taken their a few times to work with some weird flouting worms. "They had me activate some grey metal devices then rushed me away as the things started up. Those worms got all chirpy and excited, but I still can't figure out what they had me doing." He pointed down another hall at an intersection. Taking a step through the door, he took a plasma bolt to the side before anyone registered the large group of Jackals around the corner. Rookie covered Macer with fire as she pulled Brant to safety behind the corner.

Shepley came to the marines side, taking out her biofoam injecting Brant throught the hole in his ribs. The Marine stopped screaming, then after a few breathes, stood while holding the spot his lower ribs used to be. The civilians backed away looking for a way to run, but Dare was there to seal the door behind them. She sternly reminded them, "The only way is through." She pushed passed them to the marines and her team. She looked to Tarkov saying, "We're far enough from the outer hull. Use explosives to clear the corridor."

Rookie and Tarkov both took out their grenades tossing them down the hall. They readied their rifles once the explosion shook the floor. The ODST's and Macer ran to the other side of the intersection and took up firing positions.

The few marines at the original corner did the same with a little less coordination. The Jackal force broke with the opening the grenade made, but the mass of them were torn down by rifle fire once their shield wall left dropped leaving them vulnerable. The team swept the fallen covies for more arms. With the group fully armed they pushed onward to the engine room. Brant had to fall back down the line and be shoulder assisted to keep going. Several more firefights along the way injured more and more of the freed prisoners with a few being killed.

Every one of them took a sigh of relief once they arrived at the engine room. Dare pushed them in and ordered defensive postitions even as more covies flood in from other enterances. The team held their own while Dare use her ONI tool to find the panel with the AI chip. She passed human, covie and even forerunner tech in her search. Sirius suddenly appeared and beckoned her "Wait!" and held up a hand to stall her. Sirius looked lost in thought for a second then a covie panel startes a countdown.

"Ok, pull me." Sirius gestured to the chip as it spoke. Dare took the chip and inserted it into her ONI tool. Sirius immediately took a scan of its new home, the ONI tool. "Kind of a tight fit in here, now I know what a genie feels like."

Dare looked irritated quickly asked, "How much time did you give us?" Sirius responded with a countdown it sent to all the ODSTs huds 10s. All the troops started shouting curses. Sirius added, "I've left a fragment in the ship to start the coutdown once we are off the ship or if you fall."

Sirius then put a waypoint on the ODSTs huds indicating the hangar bay. The AI also informed them, "While I was in the system I could misdirect the ships forces, now that I am not. The Shipmistress will send all her forces after us."

Dare took deep breathe an muttered, "Now you tell me." Dare ushered the team along at a fast pace. They made it to the hangar bay before any large resistance could be formed. Once there they found nothing to help them off the ship. The shipmistress had ordered the hangar clear of all Spacecrafts to cut off the humans escape. They didn't spend any time in delaying Dare called the next possible escape up in the huds, the grav lift.

The team sprints along the wall of the hangar bay knowing speed to be the only way through this trap. The covies showed themselves on multiple levels of balconies, while the humans made for the safety of the corridors. Fortunlately the Covenant troops were using mostly the inaccurate plasma weapons. Still, plasma rained down on them in greens, blues, and reds. Half of the remaining civilians were cut down or took injuries so bad they couldn't run and where left behind. Three marines including Brant didn't make it off the hangar bay floor. The Covies had filled the upper floors and devasted the humans from the high ground. Dare gritted her teeth as plasma fire pelted the door and floor around her. She took in all those people she just lead to their deaths. She stopped near the exit looking back on the hangar floor. A handful of civilians breathing heavy also stared out to the floor. They looked terrified, but they had to keep moving, they just survived that terrible run. Dare waved her ONI tool over the bay doors locking them. She looked to the civilians and only said one word, "Move."

Dare moved up the line to the front by the Rookie and Macer, their aromor burning in several places. She brought up her ONI tool, then bade Sirius to plot a course to the grav lift. Sirius replied, to the close onlookers dismay, "The grav lift will not get you safely off the ship to the surface. I would not advise that course of action."

Dare screamed at the AI, "Damn it take us their or we're dead!" Sirius lit a waypoint for the team and Dare motioned Macer to lead the way.

Macer strode passed the Rookie in a daze. She had never seen Dare lose it like that. She knew Dare would get them through any situation but now for the first time she saw Dare as a real human being and not an ONI super spy. It scared her more than a little. She came to the conculsion that Dare might call the mission a wash, after losing all those people. Dare might at any moment declare they couldn't get off the ship. Blow the AI and them up trying while trying to disable this ship as much as possible. Macer didn't communicate this to her fellow point man the Rookie. He didn't need to know, it would just distract him from spotting enemies which he had done extremely well so far.

The team was nearing the grav lift bay. They were in a large hallway that slanted upward ending in a massive door. The hall looked more like a staging ground than a hall to Macer. The Rookie was the first to the door. Macer appoached, checking the panel. It was locked, the Rookie grabbed her arm. The motion spooked her in her already nervous state concerning Dare. She noticed Rookie was trying to be sublte as he leaned in and signaled her to cut her coms. She looked at him for a second then did so. Whispering she had a hard time hearing him, "If this goes bad, we need to find another way, keep an eye on her." He barely nodded in Dare's direction. He knew! He knew Dare was on the verge of calling the mission a wash. "Find a way. You two are spooks, I've seen you have guts but your still spooks. I'm not letting anyone call our mission. We can win." She wasn't sure what he meant by the "your still spooks" comment but she felt, she should be offended, but found she wasn't these ODST's have trained for these dire situations. They dropped behind enemy lines, knowing to their core that the only way they live is to press forward. The only way is through.

Rookie waved for Macer to reestabish coms and unlock the door. Spider and Tarkov positioned the remaining force to the sides of the great hallway, there were a dozen of them left. Macer waved her ONI tool over the panel and it gave off the access denied buzz. She tried it a second time and nothing, looking to her Captain.

Dare just tapped the AI chip port with the tip of her pistol. Sirius stalled for a second before appearing above Dare's wrist. "Open the doors." She said flatly, she seemed to have gained back much of her resolve after the loss in the hangar bay. Macer definitely knew that Dare had already made up her mind to call the mission. To her the remaining team members were already ghosts. Macer brought up her ONI tool calling up a hologram of the ship. Dare ignored Macer, focusing on the small figure on her wrist. "Open it," She said more forcfully.

"Sir," Sirius started, "the grav lift isn't capable of safe extraction at this altitude. You must..."

"What are these?" Macer cut in. Dare took notice of what Macer had pointed out on the map.

It looked like rows of ODST drop pods. They were close to their position just through the grav lift bay and down a connecting hall. Sirius answered, "those are the infiltration pods similar to your drop pods used by Elite Zealots to infiltrate and asassinate their targets. Those are your best chance to get to the planet. However as I mentioned they are designed to transport elites to the surface not humans. While in the ships systems I ran simualations on everything in this ship including those. I ran them with human anatomy stats and they have a 50% less survival rate, than your pods."

Spider commented, "I thought most of their tech was better than ours. Wow, its nice to know they die more on entry than we do."

Sirius corrected the trooper, "The Elites had a 99% success rate using the pods. Humans however can't stand the G-forces the Elites can and they also receive the impact better with their reverse knee joints. The pods could crush or kill you on impact."

Macer contemplated that a moment then asked, "Are the pods propelled from the ship?"

Sirius responded, "Yes."

Macer asked, "Can the pods be released manually?"

The AI responded "Yes, but I have not run any simulations. However with the lack of propulsion the speed increase would be consistent with the UNSC drop pods except for the impact."

Dare added there, "can you coordinate the pods path for the descent?"

"Yes, though I recommend not aiming for the desert, the pods would be buried and you increase your chances of death," said Sirius.

Dare broke the conference with the AI and Macer. She turned to the remaining survivors. She spoke to them, "We have a chance to make it off this ship alive, however most of you are going to have to do something you've never trained for and some of us may even die in the process." The few marines left looked ready, but the civilians looked like they were ready to run. Dare brought up a hologram of the ship in front of them. She then told them the plan. Almost all of them looked hopeful knowing their freedom was on the other side of the next room even if they could possibly die in the escape pods, to them that was a worry for later.

Once everyone was ready, lining up against the walls, Dare went back to the panel. Macer saw her sure step and saw the ONI super spy back in control. They were going to make it out of here.

 **Chapter 17**

Break on Through to the Other Side

Dare swiped her ONI tool over the panel, the doors opened with a whoosh. Dare, Macer, Rookie and Tarkov were the closet to the door when it opened. There on the other side, the team nearly jumped in surprise to see a wraith tank right in front of them. Luckily it was facing away from the doors and towards the center of the grav lift bay. Unforutantely it was occupied and hovering a foot off the floor. Rookie didn't hesitate, he immediately climbed up the side to place his silenced pistol to the Jackals head that was in the gunners seat. He squeezed a round into the creatures temple.

Tarkov was right there an instant later. On the other side helping pull the body out of the standing gunner seat. Rookie hopped in and was pleasantly surprised that the Jackals had modified the Wraith with a UNSC 50 caliber machine gun turret. He slid the loading mechanism taking a look at the rest of the room. The room had a company of grunts and Jackals, a ghost with an elite, a warthog with a plasma cannon attached and two hunter pairs. With all these choices he decided just to shoot the closest enemies first, the Grunts, all semi lined up to jump on the grav lift once they got to the right altitude. He took out a dozen in the time it took Tarkov to pry open the cockpit of the wraith and shot the driver. The rest of the team filled in next to the wraith after the anti grav lift thrusters shut down, it hit the ground.

The team surounding the Waith provided covering fire for Tarkov to pull the drivers body out and climb in. He fired up the Wraith in the large bay. As soon as the wraith lifted off the ground the team scattered back near the doorway. Tarkov hit the thrusters and Rookie instinctiively ducked the best he could in the turret, good thing they were engineered for Elites or Brutes. It was spacious enough even with his bulky armor to get low. So when the Wraith thrust into a cluster of enemies, the bodies of the Grunts and Jackals didn't crash into him as they flew over the Wraith.

So many more lept away as the Wraith came to the end of its burst run. The Wraith came to a stand still as green plasma exploded against the side of the tank. The Hunters had launched their powerful arm cannons it. The tank held up well against the first few rounds but started smoking when Tarkov was finally able to turn the wraith and fire its plasma cannon in return. The first blast hit a Hunter square in the chest knocking it off its feet to crush a Grunt as it landed on its spiked back. Rookie kept the next Hunter busy with sustained fire from the 50 cal. The Hunter had to raise its shield arm to defend itself, so, it didn't see the next round from the deadly wraith.

The explosion under the second Hunter launched its body sideways into the ghost. Nearly taking the Elite driver from its seat. The Elite decided to boost the ghost as the hunter's large body hit the machine. That choice had save the Elite's life, but condemed a group of jackals as he had to plow through them while they shielded themselves from the wraith blast.

The Wraith cycled up its boost for another run at the room filled with enemies. Dare saw the Wraith head into the middle of Grunts and Jackals. She also noticed the ghost finishing its bloody boost and turning towards their position, for the easier targets. She quickly dropped her silenced pistol, picking up a plasma pistol. Holding the trigger down for a full charge shot. The Elite saw her, then aimed to ram her before she got the green EMP plasma shot off. Dare released her shot just as the ghost began its boost. The vehicle crashed to the ground. The Elite popped over the top having been ready to lose control of the ghost. At the top of the ghost, it turned on its energy sword thinking it could close the gap between itself and the human.

Dare was ready and knew she had enough charge in the pistol to EMP again. knocking out the shield the elite wore, she did just that, she fired hitting the large alien. After that the pistol had no juice left for a kill shot and it was so close, to close to pull out her SMG to stop the Elite. The Elite looming over Dare, three rounds hit it right in the split jaws. Three more hit it in the chest before it fell to the ground. Dare glanced over her shoulder to see that Macer had her back. Dare dropped the empty plasma pistol, taking the sword the Elite had dropped the drew her SMG. She ordered the rest of the group to follow around the perimeter of the room. They took cover behind anything they could find.

Spider ran to the downed ghost firing it up now that the EMP energy had faded. It rose fromthe floor on a tiny lightinging storm. He thrust into the fight to flank the Wraith and plow even more of the Covenant on the way. By now the Wraith was smoking heavily with more than a few pieces missing. Spider could see the Rookie pounding on the cockpit yelling that they had to, "get out!", before the thing blew up. He bailed out and Tarkov took the wraith for one more thrust straight at one of the remaining Hunters. The beast slammed its shield arm down on the cockpit knocking the door clean off, as the Wraith slammed into it. The Wraith rolled slightly as its momentum played out, bulling the Hunter over. Tarkov with his head quite rattled slumped in the seat unable to focus enough to climb free of the alien tank. Rookie ran up to the open cockpit, pulling Tarkov out. The two cleared out of the tank, as the hunter underneath pushed the tank of itself climbing to its feet. Slamming its shield arm down on the Wraith again in rage. The tank couldn't take anymore abuse and exploded with its reactor ruptured. The Hunter didn't even realize it killed itself.

The remaining Hunter and a large group of Jackals with Skirmishers moved away from the deadly tank positioning to cut the humans off against the perimeter wall. The group was pinned down with several civilians and a marine had fallen. Spider had been quite busy with his new ride while the Hunter and tank finished their fight. The remaining Covenant had fled into a side passage on this side of the grav lift bay. He turned his ghost to look for more targets but saw the covies had surrounded his team. Rookie and Tarkov were hobbling to cover, too far away and in no shape to help them at the moment. He sized up the force left, not sure he could take out all of the them alone. Especially with a Hunter to reinforce them.

Spider saw that his team had been trying to circle around to the drop pods then were cut off. He didn't even give it a second thought once he decided to just draw their attention enough to let the team make a run to the drop pods, hopefully. Tarkov and Rookie can make it too, he thought while he blasted the ghost turrets at the enemy forces flank. He felt exposed in the middle of the room with that many covies turning his way.

Dare recognized the opening as soon as the fire on their position fell off. It didn't stop completely but at least the needles from the that Hunter arm cannon had stopped. She peeked around the barricade, seeing Spider on the ghost having drawn some of their attention. She commanded the few troops she had left for covering fire, pulling Macer in a sprint to the door, popping it open with her ONI tool. The two took cover inside the hall after making sure no other hostiles were in it to pin them down. The ONI officers covered the troops as they ran into the hall. Clearing the hostiles she called for them to start their escape. All the civilians ran down the hall to load into the pods. Dare, Macer, and two of the remaining marines stayed drawing fire for a few moments to keep the covies at bay.

Rookie and Tarkov now recovered had approached the hall near the Covenant force. Trying to find an opening to make it to the pods, they saw the rest of the team make it. With Dare's small force holding the door. The two ODST's checked their gear, finding they were running low and without grenades to make an opening. Rookie looked around and a satisfying grunt escaped him when he saw a Hunter had fallen near to them. He sprinted out taking cover behind the behemoths corpse. He pried the fuel rod cannon off the beasts arm hefting it. He had to clean out a few dead worms from inside the cannon before he could get to the firing mechanism. Rookie was grunting a lot now that he was quick stepping back to Tarkov's position with his new cannon. Once there he nodded to Tarkov to check and see if he was ready to move. Rookie pivoted around the corner of their cover and fired. The Glasser showered hot plasma the on the backs of the enemy force as they faced off against the ghost and the defenders of the door.

Rookie followed Tarkov as fast as he could to reach the door. Spider saw the final Hunter turn at the newest attack. It came around in a crouch with its sheild into a defensive stance. Once it saw the two ODSTs running for the door it raised its needler cannon arm. Spider saw his teams doom and acted immediatly. Spinning to the large Hunter's side, he hit the boost. The Hunter turned suddenly seeing the new threat, it swung its shield arm around defensively hitting the ghost before it ran into its midsection. The Ghost and driver flew over the hunter and its covie buddies. Spider almost smiled when he saw the ODST's of his squad dash into the door right in front of him, then he saw the wall rushing towards himself.

Dare and Macer quickstepped out of the doorway trying to catch Spider before he hit. They all hit the wall hard. They hadn't been able to get into position quick enough to cushion Spider completely. Dare and Macer recovered quickly, then pulled Spider into the doorway. Dare swiped her ONI tool over the panel, Sirius locked the door tight.

Chapter 18

Flip You for It

The ODST's hauled Spider to a pod strapping him in. The remaining civilians had all loaded up and waited to launch. Dare brought up her ONI tool to a panel before the row of pods. She ordered the AI to set the pods to manual, but leave one on auto for her to stay and launch everyone else's pods. Sirius appeared on her wrist again waving its arms over some holograms the humans didn't understand. He turned to Dare and said, "Ready to launch, Sir."

Shepley finished checking Spider's vital then pulled the launch lever. A door closed over the pod and it launched with a whoosh. Rookie and Dare quickly went down the rows launching the pods. Tarkov stood outside a pod when Dare got to his. He motioned to the pod and said, "Your turn, Sir." Dare stood for a second before deciding to just nod her respect and step in. Tarkov launched her and turned to the Rookie. The Rookie stood between Tarkov and the Auto pod. Rookie motioned for the injured Sergeant to get in the manual pod, "Hop in sold...," Tarkov started, but the Rookie cut him off knowing full well how difficult his mentor could be at timees. Rookie pointed to Tarkov's pocket, insisting on a fair chance to see who gets to be the hero. Tarkov nodded taking a coin out of his pocket.

Tarkov tossed it in the air, Rookie called heads. The Rookies hand shot out at the coin and caught it before it landed back in the Sergeant's hand. Rookie held the coin out in his open hand. Tarkov just shook his head disbelieving and grasped Rookies hand in a man grip like they were going to arm wrestle standing up. The Rookie stepped in front of Tarkov forcing him to back into the pod then hit the door latch closeing Tarkov in. "I'll see you on the ground, Sir" Tarkov heard the Rookie say over the com just before his pod launched down a short tube into the upper atmosphere of the planet.

Rookie nearly jumped out of his boots when a small figure appeared on the panel next to him. "Time to go." The AI fragment said to the ODST and it motioned to the auto pod. He nodded and said, "Thanks." He jumped into the pod and the fragment launched the pod. The fragment disappeared from the panel having more pressing work to do in the enigne room before its code degraded. The door at the end of the hall burst open with the Hunter raging for the humans that killed its bond brother.

The Rookies stomach felt like it jumped into his throat. His pod launched with more speed than he had experienced in his UNSC drop pod. It didn't take long to pass Tarkov then the rest of the pods. He had one view port to watch the planet. He could see the colony with the covie ships stationed over the city for the pirates to bring their loot up with grav lifts. He had never seen such a large pirate operation. Fortunately he thought it better this way than to be attacked by the religious covenant that would just destroy colonies for the sake of wiping out the humans. After the war all the species were grabbing for resources. The ships Rookie saw now weren't even near the space elevator and masses of humans trying to get off world. It looks like the Covenant are letting refugees get away just to take everything they can while the humans run.

A lot of new smoke and fires seem to be surrounding the space elevator just to make sure the people stayed on that course and didn't try to defend their homes. Suddenly the pod jolted and seemed to change course. Dare came over the coms, "It's ok, I'm adjusting our descent to use the buildings as a cushion to slow our drop speed." Spider came over the coms, "You're going to crash us into a building to save us! Are you of you mind?"

Dare responded, "Don't worry this is my signature move."

The drop pods descended at a faster speed than there UNSC counterparts. The purple metal pods were more aerodynamic, to rip though the atmosphere faster to the surface. They also had smaller air-brake panels, but to counter that the pods had much better reverse thrusters to slow the impact just before the pod hit. The Elites are naturally bigger and more sturdy than humans so they could handle more G-forces from the reverse thruster decleration.

The civilians hit the buildings first, their thrusters kicked in just just before they hit the roof. The speed of the pods still blast throught the roof down several floors before stopping. The buildings act like a sponge to lessen their impact. Rookie hit at a much faster speed, his pod went through nearly twice as many floors as the rest of the pods. The ONI and ODST pods hit a taller building, then bounced off landing in a street plaza.

Dare and Macer were the first out of their pods not having taken and injuries before they launched. Spider tumbled out of his after Macer opened his hatch. Shepley checked his vitals and he seemed fine. Tarkov popped his hatch before Dare got close and drew his SMG as he stepped out. Dare held her hands up and the Veteran ODST lowered his gun apologizing, "Sorry, it's a habit." Dare brought up the Sirius-ONI tool and commanded the AI to locate the others.

A small hologram appeared over Dares forearm, it showed a few city blocks. Several blips appeared, a half dozen in a lower building and one halfway up a large building. It read as the Rookie's. Dare tried to reach any others on the coms getting one of the marines, "Yes ma'am I read you. I can see some others, I'm going to gather everyone up here. Before we head down to the street. Where can we meet?"

Dare looked around seeing that the Marines group was closer to the space elevator than they were. Her group was nearly under the building Rookie landed in. She orders them the surviving marines and civilians to go to the space elevator. "You'd be there by the time if you wait for us." She said.

The Marine reluctantly responded, "Affirmative ma'am. I'll get them out."

"Check your gear we are going to get our guy," Dare told her team. Sirius added in, "Captain, I'm connected through the cities superintendent now. This ONI tool is actually quite suffisticated. I can access most any of the intact city systems you need now."

Dare thought for a second and asked Sirius, "Can you find us a ride once we get the Rookie?" Sirius simply said, "Consider it done." Then disppeared placing a marker on the ONI and ODST huds indicating Rookie's pod.

Shepley squatted over Spider injecting him with a stimulant. He jumped to his feet, "Where we going, where we going?" Then seeming to notice the marker on his hud he pointed, "This way, ok, ok this way." The stim had him going a hundred miles an hour.

Shepley said, "Good because it looks like we've got 30 stories to climb, you'll need it and I wish I had one myself.

Just then the mothership they launched from spun up its slipsace drives and disppeared. As well as the other battlecruisers. Leaving dozens of dropships that were delivering more loot up, behind. Along with all the covies on the ground in the colony still looting. The ship the ONI/ODST team launched from was the highest and the slipspace jump didn't have any impact from orbit. The several just above the colony stationed with gravlifts disengaged and rose into the sky. They didn't get very high before their slipspace drives took them away. The multiple shockwaves in the atmosphere spread out covering much of the large colony knocking several buildings down that were already damaged from the Guardian event or the Kig-yar invasion. The sand in the streets cleared out of the corners and streets it had settled in, finding new corners and streets to occupy. Cars shifted in the streets and windows broke out. The shockwaves faded away and the wind died down leaving the colony covered in a dusty haze.

 **Chapter 19**

You Tough Bastard

Dare and her team had taken shelter under the building they were about to ascend to get the Rookie. They climbed out of the sand piles that covered them and dusted themselves off. The team entered the building through a broken glass window finding a stairwell next to the elevators. They started to go through the stairwell door when they heard the ding of the elevator arriving at their floor. Sirius said, "The maintenance elevator is still operational. The troopers pod is on the 34th floor." The team got into the elevator. It shuddered twice on the way up causing Macer to give a small squeak. The Doors opened at the 34th floor. Tarkov and Spider were the first ones off securing the area around the elevator. Dare brought up the ONI tool and it indicated the direction of the pod, it was close. Down a couple hallways in the interior on the building they had to use their Visor modes to see.

The team found the pod in an office. It was in a storage closet with light peering in through the hole it created when it hit. Tarkov and Spider had to pry the pod open to get Rookie out. He was alive. He pushed from the inside to help them get him out. They patted Rookie on the back and laughed about how lucky he was. Spider gave the Rookie a bear of a hug saying, "Ah, Rookie, you tough bastard!"

The Rookie pushed him off saying, "Thanks, but enough of this Rookie stuff. I earned my name back. Its, Jack." Tarkov nodded in agreement along with Shepley and Spider. The team collected themselves then Dare led them to an exterior wall to get a better view of the city before they continued on to find a way off the planet.

They could see that much of the city was still covered in dust. The Space elevator was still intact, the slipspace ruptures must have been high enough to not cause too much damage. Dare brought up the hologram of the city and laid out their course. Sirius brought up a list of possible transports. Dare settled on one back in the ONI facility. Another longsword with a stealth drive. Dare indicated several paths they could take to get there. With the covies still out there and scattered it seemed one way was as good as another. Fortunately Sirius also highlighted some weapons caches from the local law enforement.

Sirius observered the team as they made their way across the broken city watching throught helmet and street cameras. These ODST's were quite clever. They would ambush smaller covie patrols then take the new vehicles and arms. The humans would then wreak havoc on the larger groups as they tried to create blockades or any fortifications. The ODST's would use the tools of destruction the Covenant scavengers took from the various colonies and use them against the scavengers in their path. How ironic.

The ONI/ODST team were good at their work. They didn't cut a straight line to the ONI base. Instead they took a safer path, ambushing the small groups and working their way through the city by various means. They used warthogs, spectors, a couple of brute choppers, and even a locust walker. They seemed to take their time making every decision carefully then executing them perfectly. The veteran, Tarkov with all his years of experience, Dare with her precise leaderership, and the Jack's impressive battle prowess. The unorganized covie scavengers didn't seem to stand a chance against them. Until they reached the ONI buinding.

The ONI/ODST met a lot of resistance in the streets at the ground level of the ONI building. They had to go back under the streets to the tunnels they breached before. The tunnels were thick with Covenant including those buggers. The buggers seemed to be sheparding the masses of Grunts back to the surface.

The tunnels were now thick with them, there must have been a whole colony in there. Once the group where close enough Sirius was able to hack into the ONI building firewall thanks to Dares previous entry and the memroy chip codes from Del Rio. Sirius started up the stealth longsword, but through the secruity system he saw a large number of Covenant congregating in the hangar and the labs. They had Engineers in the labs working on a couple pieces of equipment. Sirius saw a large Elite with a group of Jackals and Engineers working with a large machine that resembled a server with a chair. It has a hologram pad next to it. He couldn't get access to any of the projects in the here. Those engineers were in the system blocking any information on what projects they had. So I couldn't say what any of the machines in the labs were.

The ONI/ODST team found a couple MJILNOR mark I suits that were converted to the new gen MJILNOR power supplies like the modern Spartans use. I stopped my surveillance of the covies in the labs to help program the suits for the teams use to get to the stealth Longsword operational.

Chapter 20

A Spimistresses Wrath

The stealth Longsword had a working stealth drive but the ship didn't have a working power source. Sirius located three power supplies in and around the hangar that would be needed to power the ship to orbit and use the slipspace drive. Dare had Sirius boot up the set of Mark I's that the geeks at ONI had converted, the nearly 40 year old battlesuits to run on the new Spartan power source. They weren't stuck to a power cord any longer. Macer and Spider climbed in to pilot the Mechs. Tarkov, Shepley, and Jack ducked from cover to cover behind the pair, picking their targets. The three ODST's defended the battlesuit even when a handful of Brutes using jump packs to pounce on the large battlesuits. Two of the five brutes landed on the mechs the other three touched down near them. Jack tossed a plasma grenade into the trio and Tarkov took shots at the two on the mechs, trying to rip the cockpits open.

Macer and Spider took faith in the ground troops to clean of their hulls. Instead focusing on the enemies flooding in from every door in the large hangar bay. Dare and the Sirius worked on the power unit in the hangar first. She removed it, attaching it to her belt then called for the team to move on to the second power unit. The team moved across the large bay to a side door. The mechs cleared out a group of Brutes and an Elite from the door. Dare, Shepley, Jack and Tarkov entered the smaller door. The group cleared out a set of storage rooms with crates. Racks of parts were scattered about the room. Dare got to work on the power unit from an old Covenant Revenant ONI were rerverse engineering.

They got out the power unit, then got out with Tarkov carrying the power unit. Just before a pair of hunters made it to the room from deeper in the facility. The group met up in the main hangar again with the mechs holding off a group of drop ships that had entered from the launch bay near the crater. Dare, Shepley and Tarkov ran taking cover in the longsword. Dare, Tarkov, Shepley and Mecha-Macer stayed at the longsword to hook up the power units. Tarkov and Macer held off the covies while Dare worked on the power.

Jack climbed on Spiders battlesuit's shoulder then mainly held on as Spider cleared out along room that must have been used as some kind of tunnel. The pair entered one end, clearing out a large amount of Grunts, Jackals, Buggers and a few packs of Brutes. They even stomped on a Wraith that the critters managed to get in the tunnel. Jack dismounts at a door at the other end of the tunnel, entering a control room. Sirius brought a waypoint on his hud, Jack had to clear out a handful of rooms with covies in it. He came to a room overlooking the waypoint behind glass.

Jack looked down also seeing Covenant, there was a large Elite and a Hugarok with a Jackal strapped to a table with wires crowning its head, the Elite flipped a lever and the lights started to flash and the jackal thrashed wildly. The Elite looked up, seeing the ODST, he calls to the covies surrounding it to kill the human. Jack ran to the door deciding to push through to the waypoint rather than making a stand here. Down a hall and around a few corners he found an air vent. He turned on his Visor to sneak passed the patrols looking for him.

After a few moments he felt and heard a lound explosion. The building started to rumble. Sirius came over the coms, "You best hurry the battlecruiser is back and it just activated its ventral beam above the ONI building." Jack decided to forgo any stealth and just took his chances to get the power unit. As soon as he found the next exit from the air vents he saw covies running in a panic, half of them ignored him as they were trying to escape the ventral beam themselves. Jack opens the door with the waypoint finding the room, the floating Hugarok and the Jackals corpse on the table. He had heard of these Engineers and told it to take out the power unit from the machine. He watched for the Elite but found it had run off.

The Hugarok took almost no time at all, Jack grabbed the power supply. He said to the Engineer, "follow me if you want to live." It waved its tentacles at the Jack and hummed a bit. Jack and the Hurgarok made good speed through the corridors and labs. Rookie called for Spider to get back to the longsword. The path he had taken to get the power unit was now collapsed. He had to find another way. Spider copied taking his Mark I back to the hangar. Jack took out any covies he saw even the ones running in panic from the rumbling. He could feel the temperature rising. Sirius came over the coms again, "Chu'R Tes must be really mad, the Jackals don't use the beam on sites that they could potentally pillage."

Jack decided it was best to forgot his cover to cover tactic and just started sprinting for the waypoint on his hud. The Hurgarok kept pace really well. It seemed to understand the perdiacament. They came to the hangar bay and saw thin streams of plasma starting to pour in through the vents down into the hangar. Dare yelled for them to, "Hurry your asses up!"

Jack sprinted to the Longsword jumping off the platform to the open hatch of the longsword. The Hurgarok hung tight to his shoulder as he jumped, pulling the Engineer into the hatch. Jack reached for the power unit but the Engineer took it first, floating to the power relay station.

The Hurgarok installed the power unit in record time. The ceiling in the center of the hangar burst and the room began to flood with plasma. Macer gunned the throttle, the logsword blasted out the launch shaft into the sky. The blast of the ventral beam still rocking them along with their ascension. Sirius reached out with the sensors on the longsword. Hacking the battlecruiser to collect its fragment. It linked up and merged. The fragment brought with it, its experiences. The now reformed AI shuttered as it realized what the pirates where after in the ONI facility. Sirius spoke to Dare on the coms, "Captain, you need to see this."

 **Chapter 21**

The Package

Sirius brought up a video feed from the Elite that was in the ONI facility. The video showed the Elite command a Jackal being brought in, strapped to the table in front of a machine with a Hurgarok working on its controls. The Jackal is then hooked up to the machine. The Elite turns it on, the machine sparks and the lights flicker. The Jackal strapped down wails in pain then dies on the table after the procedure.

The Elite turns reaching to the pedistal, then takes a red glowing chip out from the machine and places it in a container. It looks up, seeing an ODST watching the event. It orders all the covies in the room to kill the human. Then the Elite runs out of the rooom away from the human, on to an elevator. The ride takes it to the main floor of the ONI building. It poured downthe center of the square building then blasted out the ground floor into the city.

The Elite exits, seeing the courtyard filled with Covenant just like the ODSTs saw when they arrived at the ONI facility. He looked up again to see the main battlecruiser re-enter orbit from slipspace over head, he saw the ventral beam light up and he ran! He ran down steps and jumped in a ghost. Taking off through the streets of the colony through many Covenant running in terror. The ventral beam charged and many fled in whatever vehicle they had. Many covies still on foot were vaporized when the plasma hit the building.

The Elite's ghost raced through the streets dodging cars and ramping sand dunes. The pirates that were left behind had set up an airbase a few miles from the ONI building and the Elite just had to get to a banshee or anything airbourne. The heat of the plasma could be seen by the Elite in his peripherial vision he knew if he slowed or took a wrong turn he would be cooked.

The battlecruiser shut down its beam but the plasma still poured down from orbit, the plasma was spreading in a circle from the ONI building out. The Elite knew he was close and turned up a sand dune that had piled at the base of a toppled building. He drove up along the side of the building, now the top. The Elite hit the boost on his ghost launching with breakneck speed over the remaining streets to land and tumble off his ghost in a crash. The Elite recovered quickly looking at the pooling plasma still approaching now more slowly that the beam ceased.

The Elite ran with the remaining pirates to the transports. He managed to hop into a spirit's grav beam before it took off evacuating up to the battlecrusier. He tapped a com link to the shipmistress informing her, he has the prize. The other cruisers entered orbit, the pirates still alive on the planet started loading up from all around the colony.

The view forwarded to the Elite entering the Shipmistresses bridge. Bowing before her, raising the prize up to her. She grabbed the red chip and sliding it into the hologram pillar next to her throne. The battlecruiser seemed to gain a little life, the lights shuttered and brightened. A red hologram started to pixelate above the pedestal. Red bits swirled, begining to congeal into a hunched bipedal form. The pixels solidified into a slender creature with long arms and legs. The hologram formed claws on the hands and feet. It pixelated long feathers on its for arms and head. The face appeared with beady eyes and a long beak, the face appeared to be screaming in pain. The hologram let out an ear-piercing shreek. The Jackal hologram showed its pain to the world upon its birth. The shipmistress could be heard laughing her bird-like cackle. She had her own Covenant based AI now.

Sirius cut Dare's feed and she looked out the cockpit window to the battlecruisers. They entered into the void of slipspace taking their prize. Dare slammed her fist on her armrest in frustration. She took a moment then breathed a heavy sigh. "Sirius take us to Earth. We have to get anyone down their to help the rest of the refugees and brief ONI."

Just as Sirius entered the coordinates but before the drives powered up. A slip space rupture appeared in front of them and a giant metallic eagle appeared, "Guardian!" Macer shouted and started to turn the ship away from it. The slipspace drives on the longsword charged and a rupture opened in front of them. The Guardian sent a shockwave out and it hit the longsword before it entered the opening. The systems on the longsword shuttered and died. The ship drifting in space along with a few smaller Covenant ships that were left behind.

Some light streams into the Longswords cockpit as it tumbles in orbit. The ONI/ODSTs all float with arms loose in the zero-G. A green light flickers on a pedestal and brightens. Sirius appears looking into the dark Longsword. It flickers and brings up the teams vitals all still alive but unconcious. A humming and worm-like head with rows of eyes appears before the hologram out of the darkness and coos in its alien language. Sirius reaches up and pets the Engineer's nosewith a holographic hand, "Help us..." then the green holgram winks out.


End file.
